SH090908
by Distilledfx
Summary: Sarah Singer has been dragged into Silent Hill by a crazed kidnapper who plans to kill her for ritual sacrifice. Dark powers warp the town to stop her from escaping and to lead her to her fate, but will they take her to the brink of insanity instead?
1. Dragged Under

A recurring dream had been plaguing Sarah for years, a dream of falling into a big black pit. She'd fallen so far she couldn't see the light anymore. The hole extended infinitely, time was lost as she descended further and further. Never trying to cry out or scream, she just got tangled in the sensation.

Eventually it would be more like sailing down a smooth sheet, slowly easing her out of her dread and hopelessness. The sheets disappeared though, and once again she was dropping into the void.

Her veins filled with icy apprehension as she tried to comprehend why she would have this dream, or what it could mean. She tried and tried but the suggestiveness of the sleeping state prevailed, stopping her from remembering anything about the rest of the nightmare.

Stale air pulled her eyelids open, a more claustrophobic type of darkness now about her. Her small yellow shirt was twisted around her torso, probably from rolling onto her side. She wasn't in bed, that didn't take long to establish, she could feel prickly carpet on the bare section of her back.

She felt around for anything that would pull her into her new reality. Metal scoured her fingertips, some of it in lumps, like she were inside some sort of appliance. The area was wide though, and smelt of rubber. She heard a car door slam off to her right.

Soon after the engine started, the vibrations alerting her, snapping her out of the groggy state. She felt her chest tighten as the car rolled out of a driveway and onto a road. Her breathing came back to her, heavier than ever as she flipped herself onto her stomach and got on her hands and knees. Her skinny arms and legs swayed a little as the feeling of the road transferred into her through the chassis of the car.

She pulled up her right hand and searched the pocket of her denim skirt for her lighter. She couldn't know if her eyes were open or not anymore, the darkness now nested inside her solitary eyeball.

Sarah tried to comprehend what was going to happen to her, who could have shut her in the car and where she was headed. The sound of tires on the road got louder, soaring in volume as the car sped along the highway.

She couldn't be sure how long she'd been in there, or how far along the motorway she was. Everyone hears stories about this sort of thing on the news, but Sarah had never thought it was going to happen to her. News reports about girls being abducted and raped and murdered were all she could think about.

She was sure she could hear sirens beyond the wall of sound, outside of the cage she'd landed herself in. The tires screeched and the vehicle slid sideways, launching her head into the side of the compartment. Her eyes watered, pain shooting up to her brain. She couldn't think straight anymore, she let her arms collapse under her as the car drifted down sloping roads, out to some river or lake where the driver would gut his catch and throw the remains into the water.

Her long hair now covered her face, her back to the floor now. She ran her fingers over the carpet around her as she stared off into the black abyss. Her short nails didn't catch anything; they just ran in circles over the prickly, Velcro-like floor. Her heart reached meltdown speeds, never missing a beat as she kept herself pinned to reality. She stopped stroking the carpet and reached down for her lighter and a cigarette, like a man before a firing squad. She let her thin fingers slip in under the sewn on pocket, pulling out a metal lighter and a thin, white, stick of tobacco.

Her lips were dry and had trouble curling around the butt of the smoke. The lighter was cool against her soft finger tips, her thumb pushing the lid back and then causing the first spark. Her arm struggled to lift the lighter; all of her energy was used up, even quivering a little as she held the smoke between her lips. She summoned her strength and pulled the lighter up her body, flame illuminating the dusty underside of the trunk. She looked closer at strange marks. They looked like someone or something had tried to claw its way out.

She banged her head as the driver sped up again, hitting a bump. She felt inertia pulling her body toward the front, before throwing her backwards again. The car appeared to be rolling down a bank, leaves were brushing the paint job and the sound of the road disappeared.

Sarah had pulled her forearms in front of her face to shield any further blows. Her legs braced her against the lid as the car levelled out, slowing down. Her heart started punching against her ribs, trying to escape the hellish nightmare which they had been stolen away to.

The carpet moved a little, metal objects coming loose and bouncing around the trunk. She once again felt something cold and hard hit her head and send her out of the darkness.

When she awoke the car had stopped. Sweating heavily, her head throbbed in pain. She took a second to wake up properly and rub her sore skull. The sounds of the road and the leaves were gone and she collected her lighter and smoke.

Her pulse ended as a feeling of mortality and vulnerability overcome her, punching her in the stomach. She could feel the cold again, but this was the cold grip of death, soon to be dragging her under. Her dreams came to mind; now she started to wonder if they were some sort of precognition, a warning, an omen.

She felt around trying to find the cold, the material answer to her problem. The tire iron found her palm and she curled her fingers around it, her soft hand conforming to the hard steel.

She thought about what to do next, should she try to escape or wait until her captor attempts to take her away. She'd always liked surprises and dared to go out first.

With new found vigour she searched for the catch to the boot. Soon she found the plastic coating, the rust and the steel, and she gripped the iron tighter. Once she felt like she could break the lock she swung. The noise was dulled by the plastic coating, but so was the blow. She swung again, and then a third time before she was able to push the door open.

Just as Sarah was about to open the rusty hinges, the fear seeped in through the broken steel, the sound of the lock breaking stuck on repeat in her head. Should she wait or not, she didn't know, the pros and cons of both side included death, rape but more importantly escape. She reasoned to get out; sure that staying would result in fatality.

The hinges squealed as she pushed the door up over her head. It was stiff and in need of repair, but she was preoccupied with living a longer life. The car only raised a little as she lifted her weight off it. Her single eye adjusted to the soft light, filtered by the grey air. She guessed the smoke was from the car, but she didn't care much for speculation.  
Crouching her bony frame at the end of the dirty, cream colored car, she thought about which side to search first, deciding upon the driver's side. The tire iron at her side, she kept low on her way up the car, passing first the back door and then next to the driver's entry.

Her eyelids closed as she prepared to do what she had to do. She knew that she might have to fight, maybe even kill to ensure her safety. She flickered her eyes open and stood up, the steal cross ready to whack away at the skull of her captor. The front seat was empty, as were all the other seats in the car. Blood was smeared all over the steering wheel and the seat. She thought about the possibility he was waiting for her to do this, waiting in the thick smoke for her to make herself vulnerable, or that he had run off along the road to avoid capture.

None of the wondering stopped the wave of relief. Her fingers let the metal cross drop as she spun around to put her back on the car. She slid down the door until she was sitting on the ground. Her fingers crept into her pocket and she got ready to try another cigarette. She pushed it into her mouth and lit it, feeling more relaxed as she tilted her head back and snapped the lighter shut. She found the time to think about other things, about her career as a model and how she was going to achieve it, the kids picking on her at school because of her glass eye, all those years ago. Her face showed all of her twenty five years and then some, a large scar ran down the left side of her face, almost hidden behind her dark, greasy, shoulder length hair. Another scar just like it but more nasty looking ran down her left arm too, all the way to her wrist.

"Should have worn more appropriate shoes..." she thought aloud, light-heartedly. The words scratched her throat with every syllable, making her cough. Taking long breaths, she smoked the cigarette all the way to the butt before flicking it over her shoulder into the car window.

The strength to get up found her again, grabbing the tire iron as she did. She looked once more in the car window, this time searching for anything which could give her a hint as to what happened. The car was remarkably bare, not even the odd candy wrapper or hair could be found. She was now leaning in the window and searching with both hands. So far she had discovered that the keys were gone, she'd found some maps in the glove box and an empty can of cola in the back seat. She grabbed the maps and got out, sitting back in her spot at the bottom of the driver's side door.

She'd found three maps, one of Brahms, one of Ashfield Heights and the last a map of Silent Hill. The name Silent Hill was familiar, a holiday spot for her as a child. She remembered playing by the lake in amidst white flowers and hoped that she was at the resort town, simply for its close proximity to Brahms. She'd lived in Brahms all her life, so she immediately knew she wasn't there. The odd one out was Ashfield, a town which she'd only heard of on the news. She did know however that the only roads between Brahms and Ashfield went through toll booths and that someone escaping police would have a hard time getting through there. She studied the roads around her hometown, trying to figure out where she could be.

Putting the maps on the driver's seat as she got up, she could now see that she was on a bridge of some kind. It was made of concrete, although it disappeared into the haze. She didn't think the mist around her was smoke from the car anymore, it seemed to extend forever.

Clutching her tire iron, she made her way down the road, feeling that she might survive this yet, and hopeful that people would be looking for her. The fog made it hard to see much, but she just headed in the opposite direction she came in. Eventually, she reasoned with herself, she would see a road sign that could tell her where she was. She had no way of telling what time of day it was, she couldn't even see the glow of where the sun would be. The trees on either side of the road were thick, but eventually a fence appeared in front of them, raising her spirits higher at the thought of rescue. A property, a service station, an emergency phone, something, anything that could be of use was her goal. She crossed another bridge; this was one of those fancy ones that open to let boats underneath. It was deadly quiet, she could barely even hear the crunch of loose bitumen under her feet, the thick air felt as if someone was holding pillows over her ears. Eventually she found some arrows on the road. Her spirits lifted and she began marching down the road, even opting to walk on the footpath for safety. It must have been a few miles she walked, but eventually she found a sign. "Brahms 37, Silent Hill 2".

"Well, I guess I'm at Silent Hill then..." she breathed, dehydrated, yet satisfied that she would be able to get help. Her mind wandered, again to her topic most thought, her career. Ever since she was a kid, she knew she wanted to be a model. She would have done anything to become a model, but sadly her scars had kept her from her dream. But she hadn't given up yet, she knew that once she got back home it would only be a matter of time before they couldn't ignore her anymore. Maybe this little inconvenience could get her on TV or get her some sympathy modelling shoots. She was sick of her job, working as data entry at some office building. She couldn't even remember what the company was, nothing she did there meant anything to her and soon the strings and numbers she put in were meaningless.

The fog never thinned, maybe even getting a little thicker, probably the result of living next to the beautiful Toluca Lake. She saw a small light hovering off to her left, just in her field of vision. Heading toward it like a moth, she let herself think of rescue and getting home.

A sign stood in front of the small green building, remarkably similar to a house. It said "Silent Hill Historical Society", possibly the most boring place she could ever hope to be rescued.


	2. In a Tub

The Silent Hill Historical Society was a small green building. It looked pretty old, it even had lacy curtains on the windows, though partially torn or burnt or something. The front door was shut tight. She pushed and pushed but her thin, stick-like arms could barely move it at all, as if there was something barricading it from the other side. Not about to give up though, she decided to investigate the building further, and try to get in another way.

"Looks deserted.." she said under her breath as she moved around the side of the building, trying to look in the windows. Most of them had extremely blurry newspaper covering them or were boarded up. She climbed a crude fence and fell onto the long grass on the other side. There was a back door that looked promising. It didn't have a handle, just a piece of rope through a hole where it should be. She opened the door wide and then felt around for a light switch. There was none, but rather a sticky something on the wall like dried soft drink. She pulled away in fright but pulled herself together.

"Is anyone here?" she echoed into the void, the reverberation louder than her speech. It was pitch black inside, but a thick darkness, like you could reach out and grab it. She could see barely 2 feet into the doorway, the ambient light not penetrating anything.

Primal fear locked Sarah in her place. It felt like an icy hand had reached up and grabbed her by the neck, she stood frozen, afraid of the darkness through that doorway. Her greasy hair quivered in the little breeze that brushed across her bare stomach and back. She felt her grip loosen on the metal cross, but she held it closer, like a steel crucifix that would give her the boldness to take a step inside.

She moved slowly toward the door and stuck her head in so slightly that she could see only the darkness on the wall. She set her right foot inside the door and heard it creak. The sound made her heart that little bit more tense. She slid her feet along the floor to ensure she didn't step on anything. Her eyes adjusted to the dark after about thirty seconds, enough so she could make out the walls at least. There was a cabinet in the middle of the room with a glass top. It looked broken. She tried to remember where she'd seen a window on the wall outside. She moved to the wall and felt along it, ignoring the paintings and plaques on the wall.

Eventually she found what felt like soggy paper. She pulled it off the window and let the light slide in, giving a coldness to what she saw. The room looked like it had been robbed, the glass cabinets were broken and a number of the paintings on the walls were missing. The walls themselves looked slightly burnt, or covered in something thick and black, like some Australian Vegemite she had tried once. The thought made her sick and she looked toward the wall again to find another window. She only found one and it was boarded up so she continued to the next room. What was she so afraid of? The dark can't hurt you. The dark reminded her of the trunk of the car and the prickly feeling on her back. She started to sweat just thinking about it and decided to focus on something else. In... and out... she felt her breathes go down her throat like swallowing steel wool. There was no smell in here, it was like an anti-smell. She couldn't even smell the ever-slight sense of humidity in the air that she felt on her skin.

She slowly edged her way around the corner to her right. It wasn't really a separate room, just a corner. She found a reception desk which had a cash register upturned on it. The counter wasn't very stable, like it had been rammed and burnt on the front. The back wall had the same sticky substance on it.

She ran around the other side and checked for a phone, only to find that the cord was pulled off the wall and the phone was snapped in half. She still tried it though she didn't think it worked. Grabbing the rest of the receiver and the dial part of the phone, she started pushing numbers. No tones could be heard when she pushed the buttons, but she kept pushing, determined to hear something. Nothing ever came however, her finger tips now red from pushing the buttons so hard.

She noticed a door behind the desk. She pushed it gently at first, but when it wouldn't open she rammed it with her bony shoulder. Inside was a bunch of office supplies. She looked around and found a first aid kit. She grabbed some cotton wool and wiped the blood off her face before searching the other shelves. She looked thoroughly but found nothing of interest; batteries, staplers and loads of paper. She then noticed another door coming off this room. Feeling braver about the dark now, she pulled out her lighter and went to open the door.

There was finally a smell filling the air, but it wasn't a pleasant one. It was like something rotten being boiled. Sarah could almost feel the smell on her skin, the air was thicker for it, and it made her skin crawl. The door was slightly ajar, and there was a light source of some kind on the other side, shining through the gap. This light was different, it was a harsh light, this did hurt her eye as she looked through the gap.

Steel in one hand, she flung the door open with the other. She had to quickly cover her mouth with her small, yellow shirt to keep from tasting the air. In the room was a bathtub, perfectly illuminated by the light in the ceiling which was blazing brightly. The tub was filled with a thick brown and black liquid. There appeared to be chunks floating in it. The liquid spilled out over the side as the tub swayed on it's uneven base. Sarah felt the overwhelming urge to vomit, and began gagging on the thick air, now almost ripping at the sides of her throat.

She noticed on the wall as she went to close the door, "u wi l b a ki lr" written in the same liquid. As she fumbled the letters around in her head, she heard something crisp, something sharp as the light bulb above her. She realized that bubbles were forming on the top of the liquid. Most were small, but she look vacantly at a very large, spherical, cancer of a bubble and suddenly, it popped, spraying her in the liquid, burning like acid.

She shut the door with such force that the sound was deafening to her. Wiping her face and arms with a cloth she found on a shelf, she wondered if something could be alive in that tub. She felt that she didn't want to find out and was ready to leave the building, when she became aware of an extreme sense of pity. Something could be living in that tub, and she needed to be sure before she left. This time looking for something specific, she searched the shelves again. She dropped the tire iron and searched in desperation for something long. She eventually found a cardboard tube used for sending documents. She covered her mouth with her arm and pushed the door open again.

The room was the same as before, this time a little less disturbing and with an air of waiting. For some reason she felt the need to find out if anything was in the tub, and if she could maybe remove the plug. She slowly lowered the tube into the tub, and eventually into the liquid, her hand shaking with exhaustion more than uncertainty. She apprehensively lowered it about 2 inches into the substance before she hit something.

It was hard, smooth and suspended in the liquid. It was waiting just beneath the surface. She moved the end of the tube over the top to try and get an idea of what it could be. The fluid burst out, like someone had dropped a phone book into it. Sarah recoiled and staggered back into the room, wiping the stuff vigorously from her face. She felt something hard under her foot and knelt up against the shelving opposite the door. The light in the bathroom was now swaying and she couldn't be sure if she could see a shadow moving inside or not.

She looked for the first aid kit again for some more cotton when she heard a wet slap on the grimy tiled floor of the other room. She turned at attention like a scared little animal, and slid her back down against the wall until she was seated on the ground, and began feeling the floor for anything. Slap. The floor itself was extremely dirty, or dusty. She stirred it up searching for anything that could give her comfort. Slap. She could definitely see a figure in the the bobbing light of the other room. It's silhouette on the doorway was like a cobra, transfixing her with terror as she frantically hurried her search of the floor. Slap. She dare not look away for even a moment. She couldn't, not now with it so close to the doorway. She felt something in her left hand and took a split second to look at it. It was the tire iron, the cross which would protect her from whatever she saw in the other room, which now, slapped its way closer to the door.

The shadow now standing tall, almost as tall as she was. It was skinnier too, almost a skeleton. She saw it step into vision and she was petrified by what she saw. It didn't really have a face, more just a slit on it's head which a tongue whipped furiously around. It's skin was dark like the liquid, and it's frame, although skinny had a number of large, tumor like growths giving it an inhuman shape. It put a stumpy arm against the door and smeared a large streak of slime along it. It appeared fairly oblivious to her presence, until a few more steps.

Now breathing quickly, shallowly, through her mouth, she was almost whistling. It appeared to notice this and turned it's head toward her, it's tongue now flicking around madly, sampling the air. It took a step toward her and placed it's other, handless arm on the wall. This time it lost it's balance and fell onto the floor, squealing and flailing around. Sarah didn't need any more of an introduction.

She flung a point of the tire iron into the side of it's skull, drawing black blood and infuriating the creature. It put an arm out to try and pick itself up and she hit it again, this time penetrating the skull and spraying herself in black liquid. She quickly reached around for something to wipe herself with, finding only some office paper. The rough edges left little red marks on her skin as it wipes away the blood. It stimulated her skin, and pumped her heart faster. She stood up to get a decent look at the creature. It lay on the ground, barely breathing, blood oozing from the wound on the side of it's head. It's shiny skin looked rubbery, and smelt like off meat. It somehow looked just as menacing, bleeding out on the floor. Sarah carefully walked around it, keeping her eyes on it, until she had her back to the doorway to the reception area.

She backed out of the doorway slowly and then edged toward the front door. The door handle was being held shut by a candlestick. Breathing deeply yet quickly, she pulled it out, threw it on the floor and headed out the door. As soon as she got into the daylight she ran as fast as she could back the way she had come. She had no idea where this energy had come from, but she knew she just had to get away from that town. Fear pumped through her veins in place of blood, telling her she wasn't running fast enough, and that she couldn't get away from that place unless she picked up speed.

The fence she'd been so happy to see while coming in disappeared as she ran up the centerline of the road. The trees whipped by in a gray blur, barely visible in the gas like fog. She could feel her breath running short and she began to calm down. She could feel the road pounding back at her feet hard, making each step more painful than the last. She started to slow to a walk. The lactic acid was building up in her legs, and she felt the suffocating humidity of the fog, sweep coolly over her body, giving her goosebumps.

She walked slowly, now able to see part of the bridge, hearing a now deafening wind sweep under it, she continued to drag herself along the road, step by blistering step. Then she fell to her knees, though it was not exhaustion which brought it on. The other side of the bridge was missing. Just gone, not a trace. It looked as if it had collapsed. She crawled up to the bridge, to see over the side. She couldn't see anything, just fog, spiraling downward. She felt dizzy, and backed away from the edge.

She lay on her back in the middle of the road, closing her eyes and feeling a weight on her arms. She felt very dry, so dehydrated, she placed her hands on her stomach and let tears well in her eyes. Even though the likeliness of the whole town being messed up was slim, she still felt trapped.

"I'm gonna die here..." she whimpered into the breeze. Her stomach quivered, she breathed so shallow that it was as if her stomach wasn't even moving. She lay there for a while before she sat up. She put her legs over the edge of the bridge and lit up a cigarette.


	3. Streets of Silent Hill

She pulled out the map and put it on her lap, keeping it held down with her right elbow and with cigarette in the left.

"Silent Hill, eh?" She found the historical society on the map. "Freak show..." she said dismissively as she burnt a hole into the map with her cigarette. "Don't go there," she added. She traced around on the map with her finger and looked at the possible exits. "Well this would get me out closer to Brahms, lets go that way," she decided, pointing to an exit to the south west on Rendell Street.

The sun hadn't dimmed or appear to have moved the whole time she'd been sitting on the bridge. She took one last draw on her smoke before flicking it off the side of the bridge, and putting the map away, tucking it into her belt. She got up and picked up the tire iron she'd left on the ground. She looked back into the mist, back down Nathan Avenue and felt her lips dry. She suddenly felt dizzy again, feeling every little hair on her arms move away from where she was headed. She knew that she wouldn't have a choice but to go out another way. It was too dangerous to go into the water, especially if a bridge had just collapsed.

She moved her left leg froward, feeling the air move past it gave her a chill down her spine. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, while she headed back into the town. The road seemed a lot shorter this time, taking only five or ten minutes to reach the historical society. She paid no attention to it as she walked further down the road. The trees were silent, which was unusual for this time of year. As far as Sarah was aware, it was supposed to be April, but still the trees were silent. She kept next to the guard rail, feeling the coldness omitted by it, like a fridge in a supermarket. The grass was green, but a bluish green, and sounded dead under her feet. She crunched along the side of the road, looking for a street to her right. Eventually, the grass was replaced by pavement and the dirt gutter replaced by a cement one. She almost felt like she was in Brahms again, except that it was like winter here and she was always battling with her small air-conditioner unit at home. She saw the gutter turn a corner in front of her despite the fog. She felt her heart lift a little. She'd come this far with no problems, it wasn't much farther now.

She started to smell something, it rode the air right into her nose, choking her up and making her eyes water again. This smelt like a dead animal, plain and simple. She covered her nose with the back of her hand and gripped the tire iron tight enough to push some warmth into it. She staggered forward, afraid of what she might see, this time in the plain, soft light. With each step she was able to see more until she could see what was producing the smell. A storm water drain was to her left, and out of it two feet, in shoes, were sticking out. There was blood all up the legs that were attached and all over the grate of the drain.

"Hello?" she hopelessly asked, knowing that she wouldn't get a reply. She ignored the smell for a few seconds as she kicked the feet lightly, to see if she could get a reaction. She didn't get one. She felt scared now, alone and scared. Then her attention turned to something sitting on the top of the drain.

It was a small keyring. There wasn't a key on it, but the keyring itself was a small torch. The light wasn't very penetrating, but she clipped it to her bracelet, remembering the darkness in the old historical society building. It was shaped like a very small pen, was silver and had a dull, white light. But it was enough for her to forget about the body in the drain for a few seconds and to get back on track down the road. It took only a few steps before she couldn't see the drain for the fog. The smell carried a little further on the now still air.

She had gotten to wondering how the breeze had stopped and that she could now only see a few feet in front of her, so she had no way of knowing how far she had really walked. Suddenly the fog in front of her started to get darker. With each step she moved further into darkness, until eventually she could no longer move toward. In front of her was a large chain wire wall, with thick black plastic behind it. It was an enormous wall, and woven into the chain wire was barbed wire, enough to deter her from trying to climb it. She followed it all the way to the closest wall on her right, then all the way to the furthest side until she found a door. She tried to turn the handle but the lock was broken. On the door was writing in red, which said "Wrong way, but can you go back?" A wave of anger flooded her brain, Sarah started kicking at the fence.

"Who would build a wall here anyway?" She yelled, her voice ripping her throat. She coughed a little and then pulled out the map. The road she was on is called Carroll Street, and she guessed she was somewhere like halfway down it. This meant a trek back, but she also had to find another way to get down to Rendell Street. The next road over, Munson Street, connected to Rendell street too, and if that didn't work she could take a detour and get there yet another way. She tucked the map into her belt again and started thinking about having a smoke. She just took a deep breath and marched forward, her key chain rattling as she crunched her way up the loose gravel, into the better lit fog.

It seemed she could see better on this side of the road, the opposite side to the one she walked down on. She could almost see to the main road (Nathan Avenue) from here. This side was also a lot more interesting to look at, there were shops all up the road. Most of which were boarded up or had the windows covered in newspaper, but sometimes she could see in through a broken window at the dusty, empty shelves. She found herself wondering what must have happened to this town to turn it like this.

She remembered living in Brahms as a child and coming down to the lake on the bus and playing in the white flowers that grew near the side of the lake. She lost her fear for a second as she thought of this. She continued to walk up the road, past a deserted petrol station. And past Rosewater park, which was shut up like most of the town. She went past a bunch of faceless buildings, probably used for storage or something. She wasn't in the resort town part of Silent Hill, she was in the back part of it, the part opposite the Lakeside Amusement Park. She didn't know this area as well as the other, she usually just sat on the bus and watched the lake as she left, not paying attention to what was happening around her. She realized she wasn't looking where she was walking and that she was already at Munsen Street. She turned down the road, paying more attention.

This street had a lot of houses in it. They mostly looked the same, not too impressive, some where units. The air still unmoving, but no darkness descended onto her as she walked further. She was almost used to the fog now. It was a little thinner here but still enough to obscure her vision. She kept walking until she felt the air moving. It wasn't a breeze, it was more like breathing on her neck. She couldn't hear it, but she was sure something was just beyond her sight in the fog. She straightened up, and stopped spinning the tire iron, which she had absent mindedly been doing before.

Suddenly the mood was serious and she realized that she was in the middle of a town, where there was something seriously wrong happening. She started to think about what had happened, started smelling the faint smell left on her clothes by the monster in the tub and began to feel alone. She knew that she was lucky in the historical society, and that if she really had to defend herself she would be in trouble. People should be looking for her, but it must nearly be dark by now, despite the light staying the same. She would have to find somewhere to stay for the night, somewhere that might have food and she could could put her back against something that was solid, not just an intangible nothing like the fog.

The mist continued to thin, but she didn't feel any more comfortable, in fact it disturbed her more. She didn't realize before, but she was comforted by the fog, and what she couldn't see. She could now tell that the houses were mostly boarded up, garbage was everywhere in the front yards, and the mist allowed that smell to come to her a little bit more with each step. Eventually she felt like she could curl up and hide everything from her view, and it would go away. But she knew it wouldn't, and the smell began to close in on her, until she couldn't bear it anymore.

Suddenly she stepped one step too far, and out of the silent film type atmosphere. She could hear even the most faint of noises by now, and she could hear a gurgling, snarling type noise tickling her ear. She turned around and was faced by a wall of fog, almost as impenetrable as the chain wire wall she'd seen before. She couldn't see anything. But then she heard a slap on the asphalt. It echoed around before she heard it. She'd never heard a more chilling sound in her life. All of a sudden fear gripped her by her stomach and twisted. She knew exactly what the smacking was and started looking around frantically, like a dog spooked by a noise outside. She could see a shadow coming from the direction she was heading.

"It's just one," she thought "maybe I can run around it." But then she saw another, and another. Soon she was facing five of these emaciated looking abominations. Their skin was stretched so tightly over they're bare bones, their hands absent and oozing a tar like liquid. They walked like they'd never done it before in their lives, slapping the ground with their feet. Now feeling a sense of dread as they got closer and closer, she tried to think of what to do. Maybe they wouldn't hurt her, or maybe they'd just go past. One of them lifted their arm and squirted some of the fluid at her, landing just short of her feet. It splashed onto her shin and stung like a bull ant bite.

Her brain began to shut down, running on instincts and fear. She thought that next time they wouldn't miss and she had to get out of there. She looked down and saw that there was a crack in the ground. Any other time she would have thought it was just a crack, but it looked like an arrow now, pointing to a house on the right. She turned to look, and seeing that the door was open she ran for it. Just as she decided to run, another twisted monster shot at her, narrowly missing her face. She saw that behind her there were other shadows coming forward, and some were a lot bigger than the slimy horrors she'd just run from.


	4. Television

Working as data entry gave Sarah a lot of free time during the day. When not out selling herself to magazines and modeling in local shows, she would read. She'd once read that there are three things which people can see: reality, illusion and hallucination. Reality is what we see when light reflects off a surface and comes back to our eyes. Illusion is when part or all of an object is obscured and the mind automatically fills in the blanks, sometimes incorrectly. Hallucinations only happen to crazy people. Something has been created in their mind and they think that they see something which isn't there. While sometimes multiple people can see the same illusion, mostly, only one person can see a hallucination.

"Maybe the crack in the road was an illusion, but there's no way those monsters are real," she thought. "Am I going crazy?" She added out loud. She had shut the door behind her and locked the deadlock. She still held herself against it, trying to hear anything. The door was virtually soundproof, she couldn't hear a thing. The room she was in was nearly pitch black. The same sticky, thick darkness that seems to obscure everything not touched by the light. She was in what she supposed was a living room; there was a TV in the corner and some chairs. There was a kitchen to her left which had the window open, streaming a small amount of light into the room. She felt for the light switch and again was disappointed. It was there this time, but did nothing. She grabbed her keyring light and switched it on. Outside it didn't appear too strong, but it's effect on the dark was surprising. The room was normal enough, two armchairs faced toward the television and a lamp in the corner to her right.

She now realized that she was defenseless. She had dropped the tire iron outside. She sensed apprehension crawling up through her feet and grabbing her legs, and then pulling her into the floor. She scratched lightly at the door behind her, more just running her nails over it, hearing the sound through the back of her head. Around in circles she ran her nails against the grain of the door, calming herself. She unclenched her teeth and stepped away from the door. Standing on her own feet now she felt herself swaying. She reset her feet on the floor and felt the blood running back up her body. She could see things clearly again, she didn't even realize she had gone into this sleep like state.

Now awake, she looked around the room. The air was still, she had dropped her light, but it just hung from her bracelet. She moved toward the kitchen, looking around. The room was empty, even all the drawers were missing and the cabinets had collapsed onto the counter beneath them. Sarah moved up to the window over the sink and looked into the backyard. The fog caught her off guard, she had expected to just see the backyard, like it would be normally. She could see a wooden fence about waist height running up the left side of the yard. The rest was blocked out by the fog, although she could see a series of holes dug into the ground. She jumped when she heard the sound of metal hitting the floor.

She looked around and caught it in her peripheral vision. She turned to the right and saw the blade. The shiniest thing she'd seen for hours, a knife on the floor of the kitchen. It sat, tip sitting on a busted tile. She got her torch and spun around. She didn't see anyone, so she peeked back out into the living room and still didn't see anyone. She let her heart slow back down and turned back to the knife. She picked it up and examined it.

"Kind of a creepy thing, it doesn't really fit in a place like this; it's so clean." she explained to herself. She touched the blade. It was pretty blunt, but if she wanted to, she could defend herself with it. She tucked it into her belt next to the map and headed for the backyard.

Her plan was to jump the fences and get to Rendell street that way. She opened the back door and had to grab onto the door frame just to stop herself from falling over. Right under the door was a hole, about a foot and a half in diameter and just as deep. She walked around it and then moved toward the fence, dodging the holes on the way. She got to the fence, the air pushing in on her, she lifted her leg over the fence.

The other side didn't have any holes in it, it was concrete. The fence on the other side was chain wire but still only waist height. She ran across the yard, the knife rubbing against her short denim skirt. She couldn't even see the house, as it was to her left. All she could hear was her heart pumping blood through her ears and the sound of her shoes rubbing and smacking the ground. The yard wasn't very wide, probably 25 yards. She ran across, the tip of the knife rubbing on her skirt, making a quiet sound against the thread. She jumped this fence a little quicker this time, practically jumping over it. When she landed she fell over. In her enthusiasm she forgot about the knife and it drove itself into her thigh.

"...God!" She whimpered, as she rolled over in a ball on the ground. She sat up and leaned against the fence. The pain shown plainly on her face as she straightened her right leg out and examined the wound. Only the tip had gone in, barely a quarter of an inch. The unexpectedness had caught her more than the pain. She pulled the knife out of her belt and flicked it onto the ground next to her. She bled quickly and she did her best to stop it. She kept pressure on it until she felt the tingling stop.

She lit up a smoke and took a long draw. She felt her heart kick back a gear and relax a little. She contemplated putting the smoke out onto the wound, like they do in the action movies, but thought that it probably didn't work and would just hurt a lot. She finished the smoke and used the fence to get back up. Her thin arms made hard work of the seemingly easy task. She bent down, feeling the blood pump to the cut again, and grabbed the knife off the ground. She took a moment to look at the blade, the tip covered in blood. She could see herself in the blade, it was quite reflective, portraying the light almost brighter than it was produced.

She decided to just carry it this time, limping over to the next fence. This yard was just an average yard. The grass was long and brushed against her leg. Despite the moisture in the air, the grass was very dry, even leaving marks on her shins. The next door fence was broken down. She was able to simply walk over the fence chain wire fence. The fog was very transparent, could see the fence opposite her. It was a lot higher than the others. She hadn't realized but the fence behind her had been probably over 8 foot. The fence was chain wire, but was very rusted. It barely budged at all and threatened to cut her hands as she shook it, testing it.

"I'd never get over it like this..." she thought, as she looked down at her leg, which had darkened a patch on her skirt. She looked around and found no open doors this time, inviting her to go in.

The house she was behind had deteriorated fairly badly, and the walls were made of cheap, thin wood. It was also a part of a duplex. Maybe she could get into the other side of the duplex and out to the backyard, which she could see had no fence. She looked at the windows, hobbling along the wall and looking at the wall. Eventually she found a door, on the side of the house, under a broken clothesline. The door was pretty stiff, and had probably warped in the frame. She had to really put all of her weight into pulling the door open. Eventually she was able to open it enough to squeeze in.

The room smelled strongly of wet carpet and rotting upholstery. She was used to expecting awful smells by now, and let it slide down her nasal passages. The room was pitch black, the house next door cast a shadow on the door, and no light could even get in behind her. She did the routine search for a light switch, but again found nothing. She reached out her left arm for the wall and felt the wallpaper, which had been rotting for years. It felt very wet, and slimy, like mold had taken hold long ago. She leaned against it for support and felt it budge. Her heart had almost stopped completely. She pulled her hand away and pulled it to her side.

She had been breathing so hard she hadn't heard it breathing. She hadn't turned on the torch yet, and now couldn't muster the courage. Any sound could alert it to her presence she thought. The breathing was very quiet, and sounded like a few different people breathing at once. She hadn't had time to think about it, her mind had retreated. Her legs felt weak, her right hand shook with the knife in it. She was afraid she would drop it, and then she would really be in trouble. The breathing continued very slowly. Her right eye scanned the dark space for anything that could give away it's location.

Just then she felt something flick her leg, about where the cut was. The skin there suddenly became alive, feeling with every nerve. She could feel something cold hovering over her leg, like an animal stalking it's prey. She could feel something flickering against her leg, like a flag in the wind. Sarah remembered the creature in the historical society, how it had flickered it's tongue around in the air, sensing her. Something brushed her right hand, causing her bracelet to rattle. It might as well have knocked her arm off, she felt her heart sink so far it'd have to be in her stomach by now.

She raised the knife slowly with her hand and put it flat against her skirt, her arm slightly bent. She could hear the blood flowing through her veins, making her arm pulsate. She felt like Conan the Barbarian just long enough to make a stabbing action in the direction of the flicking. A piercing shriek filled the air, as if it was right in her ear. She grabbed the light with her right hand and shone it on the victim.

It sat crouched on the ground, trying desperately to support itself with its stumpy hands. Blood dripped out of its mouth, it's breathing amplified. The creature was exceedingly grotesque in the harsh light of the torch. It's head pulsated like it didn't have a skull, and it's heart sat in the brain cavity. It was pumping as if it was on fast-forward, in fact the whole creature was twitching uncontrollably. It collapsed on the ground and let out one last breath. Sarah looked at it, teeth clenched, she looked up and looked around the rest of the room. It was empty.

There were marks on the floor which suggested that once there was furniture in the room. There was no light on the ceiling, not even a hole where one was. In the corner was a television. It had a large hole in it. Sarah could see the insides of the TV through the hole. There was a filthy mattress half up against the wall in the corner to her left. It had the stuffing leaking out of it in one corner. And of course there was a dead creature, lying in a pool of blood at her feet. She had expected the blood to be acidic or something, but it was just thick and black.

The floor was covered in linoleum, and sticked to her feet as she walked across the room to the hallway in the opposite corner. She limped over, more to get away from the body. The air thinned a little and the smell got a little easier to handle on the other side of the room. Had the smell come from the monster? How could anyone know in conditions like this. She was hardly going to smell the creature to find out. She could see a closet with nothing in it and the sliding door pulled off and put against the wall. There was no doorway in the hallway though.

"This is the most useless house I've ever seen. There's not even a bathroom." She said, lifting her own heart a little, to the bottom of her ribcage. She could feel something like a golf ball in her throat, although it was probably her sense of dread. Her thumb slipped off the button on the torch for just a second. She could see something on the other side of the door that was leaning against the wall. She looked closer after she'd turned it on again. She tipped the door over anti-clockwise and saw a hole in the wall. It was roughly human shaped, like someone had walked through the wall. She could see a mirror or something, although shattered, through the hole. The flooring was continued through to the other room, like they'd used this as a doorway and laid the linoleum after.

"Classy.." she joked, stepping through the hole in the wall. This room smelled bad. Like a leg of ham had been left in the garbage for a long time. It even had the smell of maggots in the air. The floor was less sticky in here, not even making a noise. A door to the right was badly boarded up. From what Sarah could tell, it contained a very dirty bathroom. She didn't pay too much attention though, she was more interested by the drawings on the wall.

It was written in a Nikko, but bright red. It was a very light, bright red. It said something, although mostly not in English, over and over again. "k lr, spolng pradse." Despite missing a lot of letters, she guessed that it was meant to be threatening, and wondered who would write this in their home.

"Probably stoners, by the look of the place..." she thought aloud. She continued down the hall slowly, concentrating on the wall, but always cautious as to what was happening in front of her. She approached a room in front. She figured she must have been in the next unit by now, and started to have a good look around. She couldn't see any monsters this time, although she could feel another presence in the air.

There was a TV in the corner again, another sign that she was in another home. There was a chair knocked on it's side in front of the tv. The screen was intact on this one, and totally dust free. This didn't appear too unusual to Sarah, as she was used to seeing televisions without a thick layer of dust on them. In the far left corner of the room , across from a heavily barricaded door, was a table with a large cooler on top of it. It looked like it was made out of plastic coated metal, she guessed as much because the plastic was missing in some places, and the metal underneath looked very rusted. She approached the cooler, while on the brink of paranoia, checking her surroundings for anything unusual. She leaned over the side of the cooler, which was about level with her shoulders.

She lifted the light so she could see. Sarah was not prepared at all for what she saw. A baby was in the cooler, it looked like it had been used as a bed for the child. The baby was obviously dead, looking slightly burnt and red raw. The eyes were closed, in a peaceful way. One of it's arms was missing, Sarah's mind not able to work out which one. It's closest ear was missing, and it had a cavity in it's head. The smell was the thickest here, almost bludgeoning her over the head.

"Who could do this..." she leaked under her breath. She collapsed, her knees smacking the smooth flooring. She propped her back against the table and buried her face in her hands. It wasn't the first body she'd seen in the town, but she knew why this was so disturbing to her. She cried silently, soon she found herself covering her mouth and not her eyes.

She muffled herself as her mind adjusted to what she saw. The television was on, and blaring static. How had she not noticed this sound before. How could the TV be on? The white light flickered around the room, making it seem like daylight in the dull town. It just emitted static for one minute, two minutes, three minutes. It was never going to stop. She sat transfixed by it, like a dog watching a cooking show, comforted by what she saw.

She felt she may be tilting her head but she didn't adjust herself. She kept tilting her head more and more to the left, as she watched. Four minutes... five minutes. Time just seemed to stretch, she stopped blinking a few minutes ago, taking in all that she saw. Was she being hypnotized by the television? How had it turned on? She kept trying to ask these questions, but the more she did, the more they rattled around in her brain, like a data entry task, it lost meaning as soon as it got to her. It just distracted her from her ever dropping head. It eventually hit the wall and she fell unconscious.


	5. In Circles

False awakening is the phenomena where a person is asleep, dreaming, and believes that they have awoken, but haven't really. Sarah's first experience with this was as a child, and wetting the bed. She had thought she'd awoken and gone to the toilet and peed in the the bed. Since then she had tried to get into lucid dreaming, that is becoming aware you are dreaming while dreaming in order to take control of the dream. She hadn't achieved this, and gave it up after just a few weeks, but never forgotten the thrill it had given her just to remember dreams which she would have surely forgotten otherwise.

Sarah woke up, her head against the wall. The left side of her head felt heavy, so she felt it. It was covered in something sticky, she looked closer and saw that it was blood. She felt her head but she didn't feel any pain. The television had turned off again, so she reached for the light.

The walls had become caked in blood. Some dry, but some even crawling. It was like a bad horror movie. She found herself on her feet, spinning slowly and just taking it all in. The table she had been leaning against was now an upturned bathtub. It had a large hole in the side with nothing but black through it. The floor was just cement. Not covered in blood, just cement. She looked over at the TV and found it to be full of insects.

The chair was still tipped over. She leaned a little closer and saw a shoulder, and then a head with a hole in it. It was similar to the baby, the hole in the head, the skin looked burnt on this man too, but he had a wooden pistol in his hand. She knew he was dead, she could see his stomach spilled all over the floor. Insects were crawling through his entrails, making them appear to bubble or be alive.

Sarah could only shake her head and step backward. Was she in some crazy television show? Or a computer game that she'd forgotten she was playing a long time ago? She found the hallway she entered through to be blocked. A chain wire fence ran across the entire opening. She was sure she could see dark figures in the distance behind it, moving around, but they stayed in the shadows.

The only thing left for her to look at was the baby again. She felt sick at the thought, tasting the bile under her tongue. The back of her teeth hurt just thinking about it. She edged closer, expecting to see the baby again, perhaps worse off this time. She was lucky though, because all she found was a note.

"Sarah

its ok for you to kill your baby why cant i kill mine?"

This made her feel dizzy. She put her arms against the cooler and let the blood rush back to her head. It was true, she had killed her baby. She was twenty-two years old when it happened. She was on the brink of a deal with a smalltime New York magazine called "The Big Rotten Apple," she had been waiting on results from her pregnancy test for a while, not convinced by her home tests. As soon as the doctor told her she was pregnant, she stormed out, found the nearest abortion clinic and had the fetus removed. That was nearly 3 years ago.

"That was different though," she thought, "This baby had been born and brutally murdered, not removed before it had even drawn a breath." She felt ashamed, but also uneasy. Clearly something had changed. She didn't normally receive notes from strangers who knew things even her parents and best friends didn't. Her mind again turned to the body on the floor. What had happened? Was this man the baby, grown up? Was he simply murdered to make a point? All this seemed to fit in a place like this, it didn't seem so alien.

She decided to get the hell out of this room. She hobbled over to the door in the opposite corner of the room and tried the handle. It was a dirty gold color, the door itself was gray, in contrast to the walls, but not the floor. The handle moved perfectly smooth in the door, something Sarah wasn't used to. It opened inward, and she stepped around it.

She wasn't welcomed by what she saw. The ground was missing. It was replaced by wire mesh. It was hard, so it didn't give way like the chain wire walls. She could hear loud chirping, like big scary birds where trying to get into her cage. She couldn't see anything, but for once, the fog was gone. She got a start when a creature slammed into the side of the cage to her right. It had claws on it's head, snapping at her through the wire, but not trying to break in. It's head twitched like it was on a time lapse camera as it clawed it's way along the side of the cage. There was a floor on the other side of the fence. It was a hard floor, made up of disgusting looking tiles, with brown ooze smeared all over them.

She spun around and tried to open the door, but the handle wouldn't turn. She couldn't hear herself think over the insane chattering of the creatures. They spanned all the frequencies, like an organized static. The monsters moved around the sides of the cage, attention on Sarah. They chirped and twitted to each other, testing all areas and searching for any opening. Sarah checked around her for her own way out. Behind her and to her left, she noticed a door. She hobbled up to it as quickly as she could and reached for the handle. She noticed that the door handle wasn't a real handle, it was a baby dolls head, covered in a red liquid. She felt her stomach acids churn. She reached out and grabbed the handle and turned it, pushing the door inside.

There was a harsh fluorescent light in this room, shining off the cement-like walls. They were a pink-red color, like they'd been there many years ago and worn down. On the wall in bright red was written, "Only 2 more howses left." This sent mixed feelings both into her stomach and chest. She felt relieved that there would be only two buildings left, but she wasn't sure the writer of the message meant she would be at Rendell street after two houses. How would she get through these houses in this crazy environment? How could they know where she was going? Who could have written this message? She let these thoughts settle in her mind as she looked around the room some more.

The fluorescent light hung from the ceiling, dangling from a single wire. It swayed, as if it had been recently knocked down or touched. The writing was on the wall to her right, not far from the light. There wasn't much in this room, the floor was bare, except for a few cracks in it. A door was at the opposite end of the room. She felt afraid to open it.

She turned around and looked at the door she had come in through. The door handle on this side was made from the body of the baby doll. It wasn't covered in the blood, but it was very grubby and dirty. A note was on the door for her, and she knew it was meant for her because it had a picture of her, a stick figure and an arrow pointing to her name. It didn't say anything else, but the figure in the picture wasn't happy. It was poorly drawn, most likely by a child. Sarah turned from it, feeling uneasy.

She proceeded to make her way across the room, slowly at first, but by the time she was at the other side she was nearly running. The room was longer than she had first estimated, taking her a little longer to get across. The light began to flicker as she neared the door. The pain in her leg died down with each step she took, but she could still feel it bleeding a little. A patch on her skirt near the cut began to get darker, and she knew that she had to find some way to stop the bleeding.

Before she knew it she had gone through the door, this time not closing it behind her. She stood in a room, now a little darker. The only light in the room spilled from the doorway and the flickering fluorescent light. She surveyed the room quickly, anticipating the light would die any second. The room looked like a normal children's room. There were no toys on the floor, but the soft carpet could be felt, even through the soles of her shoes. She did not enjoy it though, there was a cot in the corner to her left and against the opposite wall. It was below a window, which appeared to open into the night. There were few stars, but no creatures, which made Sarah feel a little more comfortable.

The light from the other room swayed back and forth, changing the angle of the light constantly. It nearly reached a part of the wall to her left which was dark, but slightly reflective. She assumed it was a blood stain, now acclimatising to this new environment. She could see that there was nothing in the cot, no mutilated baby or bloody patch. This place seemed to know how to get to her though, as she found this even more disturbing than the baby in the steel cooler box.

She felt a cool breeze brush her neck. It felt like the blade of an ice cold knife as the fear once again shut down her brain. She decided it would be safe to turn around. She spun anti-clockwise on the spot and looked into the other room. The door opposite was open. She could see into the cage. Had one of the creatures got in? She felt that thought rattle around in her head a little before coming to the surface. She shut the door with her right hand, slamming it and shaking her bones with the sound.

She was now plunged into darkness. She could see a little outside, but nothing managed to penetrate the room's colossal blackness. She felt around with her right hand for her torch keyring. She fumbled a little, trying to find the small round button which would let her see again. She became dizzy in the darkness, losing her orientation. Finally she found the button and the light with it.

She gasped at what she saw. The room was now covered in a thick, brown slime. It was like icing. She felt horrible, the smell went straight down her throat and into her chest, almost strangling her. She couldn't move her feet, she couldn't even look at them. She had found a way out however, there was a door to her right, which was absolutely caked in the liquid. She could see the handle, it stuck out like a bubble. The ooze slid down the wall, crawling down it like millions of little insects. She moved toward the door, her limp now replaced by the suction of the slime on her shoes, like walking through thick mud. She managed not to lose any shoes as she moved toward the handle.

She was finally within reach, she stretched out for the handle and pulled. She slid through the mud, closer to the door, but she couldn't open it. The weight of the sludge was holding it shut. She pulled with all her might, but didn't get anywhere. She took her knife and found the outline of the door. She turned the handle and stuck the knife into the gap, trying to lever open the door. She felt it move a little, the knife not bending under the strain. The door moved little by little and eventually opened enough for her to get through the gap. The door stayed open as she walked to the other side.

She looked around this new room, expecting something shocking. She was fortunately disappointed, as this room was bare. It was as if she had escaped from the previous room before something scary for this room had been conjured for her. The walls were covered in very faded, light green wallpaper, and looked like they were from any ordinary, old house. The ceiling was dark, and she couldn't see it very well, but she didn't need the torch in this room, some light source in the room had lit it like it was a late afternoon, and a harsh light was coming in from the west.

The light was orange-y, and made her feel comfortable. Had the world returned to normal now? Was she going to be safe? She walked across the long, hallway like room. She felt at ease in this room, like she could just sit here until all of this just stopped. She thought about that a lot as she walked across the room. Would she ever be in the normal world again? Could she simply wait until it passed?

She saw a large, rusted, metal cage fall from the ceiling, not a foot from her face. The shock of this unexpected ambush was nothing compared to what she saw inside this cage. A creature, like the ones from the outside of the cage room was trapped in the box and was slamming into the sides of the cage, desperately trying to free itself. It flailed around, no doubt hurting itself, and chattering rapidly. There was a chain from the ceiling to this cage that kept it suspended on just one corner. The cage could spin a little on the corner, and the creature tilted it toward Sarah's face.

She could see this horrible fiend clearly now. It had large, spider like claws on it's face, snapping wildly at her from inside the bars. It had claws on it's hands, but couldn't fit them through the cage to swipe at her. It smelt horrible and looked like it had been burnt. It appeared to have some sort of torn clothing on it, partly burnt, but mostly missing. It might have been white once, but now it was yellow, like a thousand years of sweat had transformed it. The monster also had a few small hairs on it's head, like it may have been human.

She caught herself thinking that thought. "No way this was human..." she argued. She felt her heart collapse at the realization of a new problem. How would she get past this thing. It was right in front of her, and the cage surely weighed more than she could move. It spun crazily on the point, tearing up the linoleum floor. She could fit past it if she got down and crawled past it. If she stood up she could be crushed against the wall, but she couldn't have been if she got down and was quick.

She got onto her knees, feeling the lino imprint on them, the pattern digging in. She put her palms on the ground with them, and launched herself into the gap to the right of the cage. She propelled herself through as fast as she could, knowing that she could still get hit by the cage if it spun hard enough. She moved past the red, rusted cage and out into the open. The room had gotten a little darker, as she got up and headed for the door opposite.

She fought the urge to look back at the cage and the poor imprisoned mutant, and instead marched to the way out. How could she possibly know how many houses she had gone through? She touched the handle and once again felt the cold steel slow the blood down in her hand. She twisted it with a flick of her wrist, wondering why she hadn't just stabbed the creature in the cage. She tried to justify it to herself as she shut the door behind her and found herself in another open area, caged in and protected from the deformed, animal-like monsters.

It was as if she had returned to the exact same area as before. There was a door, in the same place as the baby head door before. She calmly walked up to it, unphased by the obnoxious noise emitted by the black blobs on the side of the fence. It appeared to be the same door from before. The same dumb looking baby head, with the opening and closing eyes stared blankly at her. She turned the handle again, and stepped back into the room with the picture on the door.

The writing on the wall was different this time, the previous message was covered in blood and the opposite wall now bore the words. "u cant go arownd in cerkles forver can yu?" She felt let down. The door opposite had just clicked shut. Maybe the liquid had filled the room by now. She didn't really give it much thought, she just wanted to get out of this loop, out of this nightmare. She turned around, looking for clues on the image on the door. It just showed a picture of her again. She didn't like the picture. She'd always been told she was too thin and this image illustrated it.

She looked down at the baby doll body. It was the same as before. She tried the door again. She could open the door, and go back out into the cage room, but that wasn't what interested her. She heard a rattle from inside the body. She tried to pull the baby off the handle, but it didn't work. She gripped the knife and stabbed into the baby. She felt satisfaction, like she was letting something out. She wished she had stabbed that thing in the cage, she should have stabbed the ones that hung off the cage room, she ought to have... she stopped there. She had absent mindedly been pulverizing the doll body. It was disfigured and full of holes. She concentrated on finishing the job, and cut the babies legs off at the waist. She knelt down and looked into the baby.

Inside was a key. "I'm going to get out of this loop" she thought, letting the thought swim around, parading off it's colors, raising the moral of all the other thoughts. She took the key and held onto it, putting it around the handle of the knife, trapping it between the blade and her fingers.

She grabbed at the remains of the doll and tried to open the door. It was hard work, but she eventually got it open. She felt the ripped shreds of plastic slipping through her fingers, but also slipping off the door. She had just managed to stick her hand on the other side of the door when it finally let go. She heard the head on the other side of the door slip off too, so she had to make the decision now to go through or do another loop. It would be hard to get into the other room with the liquid. What was there for her to unlock? The key looked old, but it was metal and looked like a door key, or a car key or something. She hurriedly searched her memory for anything that could be unlocked. Then she realized, as she opened the door and went back into the cage, that the room behind her was full of mud, and she wouldn't be able to open the door anyway, and that there was no door back in there.

She felt the door snap shut behind her, almost angrily. She walked across the screaming room, resisting the urge to cover her ears, noting her previous bad luck with the knife as a reason. She saw the golden handle from before. She felt satisfied when the handle slid around effortlessly in the door. She opened the door with her right hand and let it close behind her. The body was still on the floor, the walls still bleeding. But she felt like she was finally somewhere that could link her to the real world. She remembered the chain wire opening on the left wall and didn't even turn her head to see it. She walked up to the door on the wall to the right of it and looked for a keyhole. It had been in no condition to open previously, but now it was simply caked in blood. She tried to fit the key into the keyhole without touching the door, almost successfully. Her knuckles touched the blood as she turned the key. Outside was the street, like normal, but night time. And no fog.


	6. Luckless

The air was just as thick as it had been in the fog though, although it was hot and humid, and made her feel filthy with sweat. She knew she was fairly dirty, having gone through the slime and crawling on the floor among other things. The street looked normal, although she knew that she could see things on the far side which could be blood, and the buildings had chain wire fences in front of them, some even covered in large white covers, like they were getting sprayed for insects. She made her way down the street, unable to see much but the street in front of her. She hadn't realized that she was walking down the center line of the road until now. The road itself was extremely faded, but she could still only see it when it was within the range of her torch. She walked further, guessing that she must be nearing the corner.

She saw something in the distance. A street light was on, it appeared to light up a caravan, or trailer of some sort. It was a big white mobile home that appeared to be fairly well maintained, considering the conditions. She thought about going inside and having a look, or at least checking to see if anyone was inside, but realized that she could nearly be home, and all she wanted was to get there. She occasionally heard the creatures scuttling along the fence, probably looking for a way in, but Sarah felt she was pretty well contained, as she would surely have been found by the monsters if they could get in. She walked absent mindedly toward the light, like a moth drawn to a fire. She reached it without any problems, and pulled out the map.

She sat down with her back to the street pole, feeling safe under it's harsh white glow. She could barely see in the light, it hurt her eyes to look at the map. She saw that she was on the corner of Rendell Street and Carroll Street. She must have come out in a house an Rendell street, because she didn't really turn any corners on the walk there. She felt hopeful again, realizing that her way out was only a little bit further down the road. She couldn't really see anything in the direction of the gate. She had assumed that it would lead into a tunnel because of the slope of the road and she could see some cement on the sides of the road.

She got up, picking up the knife and tucking away the map, and began to walk in the direction of the gate. She made her way a little quicker than she thought she ought to, excited about getting out of this place. It really was weird; something was very wrong with this town. How had she not heard about any of this? Surely someone would have escaped from this too? Was she just going crazy, and all of this wasn't real? She had started walking faster down the slope on the road. She could see a single light, it was in the center of the road, so she guessed she was right, the road did lead into a tunnel.

As the road dropped off she began walking faster and faster, until when it finally leveled out, she found it hard to stop, like she was out of control of her own body. She forced herself to slow down when she saw that the light wasn't the only thing at the tunnel entrance. She could see that the tunnel was closed off. A large white, plastic sheet was pulled tight across the gap. She felt betrayed and trapped. The light made the area seem a lot smaller, the two lanes almost merging into one. She knew she wouldn't find a door or a way out but she searched the opening anyway, holding onto the hope of escaping this prison-like world.

"How could I be so stupid" she thought, "I wouldn't be allowed to get out that easily". Something was out to get her. Something didn't want her leaving Silent Hill. Who would do this to someone? Someone had to be creating these barriers, they don't just appear. She walked to the edge of the road on the left side, and back again, unsurprised by what she found: nothing, definitely not a way out.

As she approached the light again she thought she heard breathing. It was a heavy breathing, but not too loud. She was lucky to have heard it over the sounds of her footsteps. She felt her nose block up a little, her eyes wanted to close but she wouldn't let them. Something was nearby. She could feel a presence to her right, the side with the glass eye. She looked over, turning 180 from facing the door. She didn't see the point though, in the darkness she wouldn't be able to see anything. She turned back to the light.

A dark figure stood under the it now. He stood panting a little, his face a black void of shadow. He was wearing a large white, stained coat, and dark dress pants. She couldn't make out many more details, as her eye was fixed on his right hand. She could see a large knife, covered in blood. This was no ordinary knife though, it was like a cleaver or something, it was enormous. It would have been at least 12 inches long and about 4 wide. She stood for a while, wondering if she was in the light, and if he could see her. Her heart kept on speeding up until it was about to explode. She could feel it pounding like a car engine. She felt dizzy and started to fall backwards.

She put her right leg out to stop herself from falling. At that moment she decided to run. She ran with all her strength up the slope. It took her a long time to run up the ramp, which had seemed so short on the trip down. She was almost completely out of breath by the time she got to the top, running on adrenaline. She saw her target, the camper trailer. Maybe there would be people inside who could help her. Maybe she would be able to get inside and shut him out. Maybe the door would be locked and then where could she go. She made her way, feeling her legs move clumsily underneath her, like she would trip at any second.

She eventually made it to the door. She couldn't see into the windows, they were a lot higher than even her head. She stuck her hand out and felt around for the handle, found it and turned it. It was open, but very stiff. She forced it open with her bony shoulder and spun around. In the brief moment she could see out the door she could see him, illuminated by the street light, coming toward the door with his knife. He wasn't running, he was walking. How could he get up the ramp so quickly?

She didn't stop to think as she shut the door and put her back to it. There was a small bolt lock which she did up, but it wouldn't stop him if he really wanted to get in. She put her back up against the door and felt the first fist against it. He was punching at the door, so she slid down it until she was sitting on the ground, and braced her legs against the table which was fixed to the floor in the room. She guessed that there was no one inside the van because they would have done something when she burst in. The cupboards where all broken, some had fallen off the walls and into others or on the floor. The place was a mess and she could see small dots everywhere, like bullet holes.

The man behind the door kept pushing harder and harder and she felt her legs were going to give in soon. He started banging the door with the handle of his knife, surprisingly making no noise himself. Sarah felt a pain in her stomach when she realized that he could probably just stab through the door with the knife. He kept hitting harder and harder, now banging into the door directly behind her, she could feel the blows on her back, punching her ribs. Her heart had stopped a while ago, not long after she had stopped breathing. She was too terrified to make a noise. Eventually it gave way.

The table collapsed onto the floor, the bolts ripped out of the floor. They appeared to be pretty badly rusted through, but that's not what caught her eye. Not far from the reach of her right hand was a small, semi-automatic pistol. One of those ones from TV with the slide. She'd taken a self defense course a few years ago, one of the things they got her to do was go to the shooting range. The gun caught a stray ray of light from the streetlight and she knew what she had to do.

She didn't bother trying to reach it with her hand because she needed to brace the door. She moved her right leg up and put the heal of her shoe onto the far side of the gun. She pulled it up, along the plastic coated floor until she could reach it with her hand. She could feel the impatience of the knocking through her ribs, each hit like a thump, maybe soon to be a stab.

Knowing that her time was running out she picked up the gun. Her hands shook uncontrollably. This was it, if the gun didn't have any bullets she would surely be killed. She tried to remember what she had learned about handguns, she had one at home, but it was a revolver, this was a lot more complicated. She let the handle sit correctly in her hand, the safety pushing against her skin. She was now greasy with sweat. She let her thumb move up and pull back the hammer. She now put her finger through the trigger and felt it's resistance. She squeezed with her finger. It sounded like a canon in the small room. It even muffled the sound of the banging slightly as she listened for the explosion that could get her out of this mess. She got up from in front of the door and pointed the gun at it.

"Die, you asshole!" she yelled at the monster on the other side. She pulled the trigger a few times and felt the recoil shoot through her arms. She got lost in the moment, wishing she could shoot at that door forever. She got into a rhythm, she thought, over the three, four and five shots she fired. She was shrieking like a maniac, feeling the satisfaction of making something dead.

The banging stopped and she fell to the floor, banging her knees. She felt weak, like she'd just come down from a great height. Her head began to spin and she felt the gun leave her hand. It fell onto the floor and made a dull thud. She found herself falling forward and put out her hands to stop herself. But her elbows gave way and she fell to the floor, unconscious.


	7. Lindsey Street

Waking-sleep or hypnogogia, is when a person is part-way between sleeping and waking. During waking sleep, a person can be conscious and aware of their environment, but also in a dream-like state where they can see images from their subconscious. People experiencing waking sleep commonly report the sensation of lights or shadows moving around them, as well as other visual hallucinations and illusions. A feeling of dread is also common.

Sarah could feel the floor of the caravan on her face. It felt different from before, rougher and with a different smell. She was lying on the right side of her face, unable to see much past her nose. She had passed out in an uncomfortable position, crouched over froward, with her face on the floor. She could feel the gun digging into her leg, she could feel it on the bone. She saw something flicker in front of her face, in the only part of light that she could see. She sat up straight, shaking. Her hair was stuck to her face and there was a large red mark from the gun on her thigh. She didn't see anything, although it did appear to be daylight again. She used the table to pull herself up. The van looked different from before. In comparison to before she fell asleep, the caravan was pristine. The floor looked very burnt and there was a big black mark on the wall above the small, camping stove. The bed was just a foam mattress and had a huge hole torn in the center.

There was enough of a piece intact for her to lay down on. She sat on it and then felt around for her smokes. The box was extremely squashed and had a black stain on it, but when she opened it she found what she was looking for. There were three cigarettes left, so she pulled one out and shut the lid. She pushed it to her mouth and curled her dry lips around it. She dropped her left hand to her side to look for her lighter. She found the small metal square in her pocket and pulled it out. It was in immaculate condition, not even a scratch on it. She flicked the lid and lit up the cigarette, letting her mind wonder. The relief was enough for her to wake up a little, her throat was dry as a bone, she hadn't drunk anything in probably a couple of days. She didn't feel dehydrated, but did feel like she'd done a lifetime of breathing during her stay here. As she breathed out the smoke she felt the cold again on her stomach and face.

Had it returned to the normal world? She could only hope, at least she had some comfort in the normal world, not walking on some cage. Maybe the gate had opened over the Rendell Street entrance. She thought hard about these things and remembered the wall on Carroll Street and realized that such a thing probably wouldn't exist in the real world, and might have come from the other, shadow world, same with the monsters. She should still check, although it is unlikely that she would be able to get out.

She nearly choked on the smoke as she realized that the man could still be out there. She also thought that his presence would be able to tell her if things could go between worlds or if it was all just in her head. She felt around for the edge of the bed, detesting the task but knowing that sooner of later she would have to leave the caravan if she wanted to get out. She grabbed the edge and pulled herself up, cigarette still clamped between her lips. She took quick, sharp breathes as she walked toward the door. There were no bullet holes in the door, but the gun was still there. She picked it up, feeling it's weight and knowing that it would be able to protect her. She was about to open the door when she realized that there was a fridge in the corner.

"I'll get back to that one" she thought, as she reached with her right hand for the handle. She could feel the cold radiating from the steel loop as she was almost at it. She stopped. What if he was out there, not dead? She swapped hands, holding the gun now in her right. She realized that with no left eye, it would be hard to tell where she was pointing. She pulled it up by the side of her face like an action movie star and felt around for the door handle. It didn't take long, she could almost see it with her eye. She grabbed it tight, pushed in the small metal button with her thumb and prepared to swing the door in.

It moved a lot smoother in the real world, unlike in the nightmare. She was getting used to the idea of the dark, night world being a nightmare and this being the real world. She looked down, pointing the gun down in front of her. She moved down the three stairs and heard them groan under her thin figure's weight. They were severely rusted and looked like they could collapse under her. On the ground, was a large black mark. Not like a burn, but more like a patch of dark blood. It scraped off to the left but disappeared into the fog, which was thinner near the caravan, almost like a clearing in a dense rain forest. She breathed again, and took a draw from her smoke. It didn't really make her deal with stress any better, it just was a comfort. She was just as scared when she was smoking as when she wasn't, but she felt like she could look around the next corner a little easier.

She shut the door, and turned to the fridge. It was a small white box sitting in the corner of the room. It looked a little old and was only about thigh height. She walked over to it and put her fingers onto the door handle. It was ice cold in the room, and she could feel a small amount of air blowing onto her knuckles. She yanked open the fridge, feeling more resistance than she had anticipated. The wave of odor nearly knocked her of her feet. In the fridge was a tomato, a leg of ham, a few different fruits and a sandwich, all rotted into gray-green little lumps. They formed an arc around a small bottle. The bottle was white, and was completely clean. She reached in and grabbed it, shutting the door with her heel as she spun around.

The bottle was of "Mountain Strength Health Drink - guaranteed to make you feel 100!". Though she thought this was unlikely, she remained hopeful. She wasn't really thinking about drinking it, but if it was edible she would probably have a go. She took the bottle in her right hand and took the cap off with her left. It still had the seal on it. She moved the bottle up to her right ear before she opened it. She shook it and heard the thick liquid slosh around inside. She dropped the cap and took off the seal. Before she decided to drink it down, she took the seal and smelt it. It smelt like medicine, which was a very inviting smell at the time. She looked into the bottle and saw a light pink liquid inside. She prepared herself for the taste and took a sip. It tasted like cough syrup, but it coated her throat in pink and she felt some relief. She hadn't even realized how sore her throat was until she drank it. She quickly slurped down the rest greedily.

She tossed the empty bottle on the floor and proceeded to look through the cupboards for anything edible. Broken glasses, broken glasses, broken plates, boxes of biscuits which definitely wouldn't be edible, and finally she found a first aid kit. She got out some bandages and antiseptic liquid. She checked for a use by date on the liquid, but couldn't find one. She decided to risk it and pulled up her skirt so that she could see the cut. It was a lot deeper than she had thought it would be, and it was still pretty raw, even bleeding a little. No form of scab had formed on it, which was no surprise as her skirt must have been rubbing on it this whole time. She pulled the cap off the bottle and poured a little on the wound. It stung, but only for a second. She pulled some cotton wool from the first aid kit and wiped it over the skin. She threw the cotton ball on the floor and wrapped the bandage around it. The bandage was soft, and clean, like a brand new one. This didn't really surprise Sarah, she was just grateful for it.

She abandoned her search for anything other than broken plates and glasses and just try to get out of Silent Hill. She opened the door of the caravan once again and made her way down the stairs. She stepped into the pool of blood and had a look around. She had a pistol in her right hand, the bangle jangling against the metal. She had checked the pistol and it had six shots left in it. This did little more than the knife did, as she was unsure of her ability to use it with just one eye. She had the knife tucked into her belt again, but this time it was to the side so that it couldn't stab her again. Her left hand was empty, but it was grabbing the map, more just so that it would have something in it.

The fog was back, this time not as bad. It was thinnest around the motor home but got thicker further down the road. She decided that the best thing she could do was walk down to her left and check the Rendell Street exit again. She walked along the road, feeling tired, not refreshed in anyway by her small sleep on the floor of the caravan. She moved along the road, the fog pressing in on her, more like smoke than anything else. Her skin felt cold again, like standing in front of an air-conditioner. She could feel her skin getting colder and colder until she broke out in goosebumps. She kept moving along the road, now with her arms around her stomach, trying to keep warm somehow. She must have been about 50 yards down the road when she saw it.

The road just finished. It was like a giant had come and pushed the street down. A large crevasse was there and the street just seemed to run down into it. At the corner was a sign "Sanders St" and the other "Lindsey St". Instinctively she backed away and pulled out the map. She put it on the ground, crouching over it, and tracing around with her finger. Lindsey Street ran parallel to Carrol and Munson Street, whereas Sanders Street ran parallel to Nathan Avenue. But they were on the other side of town, if she was in the bottom left of the map, she was now in the far bottom right. How could she be there? What had happened to the road? She had trouble comprehending how she would get out of the town.

She reassessed the situation. If everything beyond that point had been destroyed or pulled down into the hole then the only way she could get out was along Nathan Avenue to the observation deck. There were a few different ways to get there, but she thought that the most straight forward would be the best way, and decided to avoid the nature trails. She knew that if she had gone onto the nature trails, and for some reason not been able to walk along the track and had to walk through the forest, she would definitely get lost in the fog. Lindsey Street linked up with Nathan Avenue and looked to be the most simple way to get there, even if she was certain that nothing was simple in Silent Hill anymore.

She picked up the map, folded it and put it back under her belt. She picked up the gun and turned to her right. She felt the gap in the road pulling her in, begging her to go down, so she started to move quickly along the road. She felt very alone right now. She knew that the only things that she had encountered were not friendly and if the town kept changing she had no hope of escape. This road appeared to have a lot of shops and office buildings. Silent Hill Personal Finance, Lakeside Travel and Sweet-o-saurus where just a few of the buildings she walked past. Eventually though, she felt like she had been there before. The same sense of eerie nothingness in the air, the fog getting thicker and harder to see through.

She slowed down and listened carefully, trying not to make any sound. She looked around, but she couldn't see anything, she couldn't see the buildings beside her anymore and the centerline on the road had disappeared a while ago. She looked from left to right almost delusional, waiting for something to jump out, something to breathe, something to smack the ground with it's feet. She felt like she would be ready and able to handle it now. What she wasn't ready for though, she walked into. Another wall, made of big black plastic with chain wire in front of it stood before her again.

"Not again!" She yelled, once again kicking the wall and losing her cool. She could feel the veins in her neck pushing against the skin, popping out. The scar on her head felt the first sweat it had since she had awoken. She had nowhere else to go. She could go on the nature trails, but that would be perilous and she knew she would die out in the woods. She decided to look at the surrounding buildings; maybe she could use a fire escape to get out the back or into an alleyway and get around the wall.

She went to her left again, moving along the wall. She saw red writing on it but didn't want to read it. No doubt it would only make her feel worse and even more hopeless. There was a door on the big wall as well, but she didn't bother trying to open it, it would probably take her back to the hellish nightmare world or at the least not open. She moved along the fence, furious until she came to the side of the road. There was a store there, which appeared to be a large, tall building. It had a front door with chain wire in front of it, but it didn't cut her off from getting to the door. She squeezed between the chain wire and the wall and moved up to the door. It looked like a normal house door, but it had a plaque on it which read Silent Sound Insurance. She never thought she would ever be so happy to enter an insurance office building.


	8. Enigma

Sarah opened the door quickly, switching hands and grabbing the torch. She felt like an action hero, or a member of an elite counter terrorist unit. Her arm was straight and steady and she used the torch to search the room. It was a large reception area, fairly dated by the furniture and wallpaper. It looked like it was furnished in the 1980's. This room was different to the other rooms she had been in in Silent Hill. They all had a sense of claustrophobia, but this was a large open room. She was sure that if she found a window, she would even be able to open it.

In front of her was a large, circular reception desk. It came up to her ribcage and was absolutely covered in dust. On the other side of the counter she could see a phone and a pad of paper. They were both covered in dust too, which dulled her hopes. She moved around to the right side of the desk and around to the back. She hadn't seen before that there was an office chair tipped over onto the floor. It had all of the wheels attached and was in otherwise good condition. She ignored it and turned her attention to the phone. She slid it across the desk and picked up the receiver, put it to her ear and listened for the dial tone. She couldn't hear anything. It appeared to be disconnected. She was about to give up when she heard something in the phone. It sounded like speech, but she couldn't be sure. It appeared to get louder, but not much more understandable. She recognized the voice on the other end.

"Sara---y-----n't--------what---r---oin---you----op------it------." It was the voice of her mother. She couldn't make out what she was saying, but the tone of voice was that of concern. All she could hear was static now. She listened for a while, hoping to hear the voice again, but the static just got louder. She put the phone down and let the still air go back into her ear. She hadn't realised how hard she had been pressing the phone to her ear, maybe that's why the sound of the static appeared to get louder.

She turned to her left, to check that nothing had snuck up on her while she was doing it. She'd been mugged while she was on the phone at an ATM once. Because she wasn't paying attention, has only one eye and couldn't really hear anything, she was a perfect target. The guy who did it got caught, but she'd never felt the same while talking on the phone again. She knew that there was a hall to her left, but was sure that there wasn't one to her right.

She decided to investigate this search the desk for a map of the building. It didn't take long before she found it. Most of the drawers were stuck, but one of them wasn't and it had the map in it. She shone the torch onto the map and had a look. The reception desk was marked on the map. She was correct, there was no hall to her right. She could see that there were four floors and the nearest fire escape was on the second floor. It also said that next door was a gun store. She figured that she might be able to get into the gun shop and get back out onto the street that way. She may also be able to pick up some ammunition. To get to the second floor she had to go to the end of the hall and go up the staircase. She then had to turn left down the hall, take the first right and go to the end of the hall. There she would be able to get to the fire escape. She also hoped that if the gun store shared the fire escape that she would be able to get in.

She picked up her gun with the left hand and moved around the corner. The hall was empty, it looked like there was something leaking from the ceiling, like water or something. The ceiling had large blisters in the paint, like it had suffered some pretty severe water damage. The doors to the side were all boarded up, but from the outside, which was unusual as she thought they ought to open inside. The staircase was clearly marked and the door was open. Everything seemed to be running smoothly. She stepped in the puddles of water, feeling it cool the sides of her shoes even more. The sneakers did little to quiet the sound in the silence that was around her. She could feel every sound wave on her stomach, the small changes in air pressure enough to keep her alert.

She was near the door to the staircase, feeling the darkness invade her eyeball. It was like it was inside her eye, not outside, all around her. She kept moving the torch around, making sure that nothing was about to surprise her. She moved closer to the doorway and looked in. There was a large black mass under the staircase. The staircase itself was made of steel, like a temporary construction staircase. The mass didn't move, but emitted a smell, it was like an unclean shower smell, it was just strong enough for her to find it repulsive.

She moved around to the left side of the room, where the staircase started, as it went clockwise upward. She could see fire alarms on the wall, some broken, some not. She hadn't thought of using one yet, but figured she had nothing to lose, as they probably wouldn't work anyway. She raised the handle of the gun and smashed the glass in with the butt. She pushed the button down but it didn't do anything. She looked at it in disbelief, not at how it didn't work, but at what had happened to this town.

She was about to laugh at the absurdity, feeling comfortable at last, but then she heard something from behind her. It was just a quiet slop, like a large drop of water, but Sarah wasn't going to take any chances. She heard it again and spun on the spot. There was a black spot at the bottom of the stairs which wasn't there before. It reminded her of the mass under the stairs, so she shone her torch between them to see there was anything moving. It was impossible to tell, she couldn't make out the blob as it was, yet if it was moving. The dripping appeared to have stopped, the black liquid on the floor wasn't moving or anything.

She took this as her cue to move up the stairs. One step at a time, she slowly hovered her foot over the step before lowering it down and repeating the process. One step, two steps, three steps, four steps, five steps. She heard the sound again, louder this time. She decided to ignore it, knowing that if she looked up she probably wouldn't see anything anyway. She felt better, not looking at it, like she was in the mood for a modeling shoot. She moved up the stairs a little quicker, trying to keep up with her mind.

She heard the noise again, but this time she couldn't ignore it. It was so loud it made the stairs rattle. She shone the torch through the misty air at the place on the ground where the spot had been. In it's place was a large, hulking, creature, spewing out a foul smelling, tar-like solution. It's face was different to the other's who she had encountered, this was different. It's face was almost human, maybe it had once been human. It's eyes were tiny little white beads, surrounded by large mounds of skin, like they were severely sunken. It's nose ran into it's mouth and it's mouth was stretched, almost a foot long and full of teeth. It's head was a large abscess like thing that had a large cut running up it. It's arms dragged along the ground, not like a gorilla, but like it's shoulders started at it's hips.

She hesitated for a second, taking it all in. The skin was shiny, like it was covered in oil or something. It started making it's way to the stairs, using it's insect like legs and it's long arms. She noticed that it had a cloth around it's body, which had been stitched together like someone had tried to clothe it. She took a step back, examining the chain around it's neck, like some sort of evil neck tie. She felt her arm shake as she tried to lift the weight of the gun.

A moment ago she had felt bulletproof, now she couldn't lift the gun, she moved along the wall with her back to it, keeping the torch focused on the monster. It hissed a little as it moved toward her and spewed more of the chemical. The smell was putrid now, and felt like it was burning her nostril hairs. She found the gun to be pointed at the creature, somewhere around the head. She didn't hesitate this time, she pulled the trigger and heard the sound of metal on concrete as she missed and hit the wall. She pushed her head on her shoulder and focused on it with her eye. She took aim and shot again. This time she air-conditioned it's head.

It shrieked as it backed against the wall and then slid down the stairs. She could hear it on the ground, squirming. Hadn't she killed it? She wasn't going to wait to find out. She ran up the rest of the stairs, through the door and closed the door behind her. She breathed heavily as she leaned with her back to the door.

She found herself in a hallway which appeared to be pretty severely burnt. There was carpet on the floor and a sign on the wall which read 2F Administration. She knew she was in the right place, and started to collect herself. She now only had two smokes and four bullets left. She knew her journey was going to end soon if she ran out of either. She resisted the urge to light up and let it go for now. She would probably need those cigarettes later.

She collected herself and stood on her own two feet, feeling her balance come back. Her brain felt like it was spinning inside her skull, probably because of the fumes. She looked down the hall, following her gaze with the torch. She couldn't see anything unusual along the hall. There was a window at the other end but for some reason there was no light coming in through it. She could see that the doors up here weren't boarded up, but some were burnt up or broken. She moved along the hallway, toward the corner.

"How could I be so stupid?" She thought to herself, "thinking I was some sort of secret agent, I sure cut that out when the sludge... thing came at me." The voice in her head had an angry edge to it. She did feel disappointed in herself, but she focused her mind on the task at hand.

She had the gun in the left hand, searching with the right. She'd given up on light switches, none of them ever seemed to work in this town. She turned the corner to her right and had a look further down the hall. She couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. It was a bit hard to make out anything. According to the map the fire escape was at the end of the corridor. She could see a door at the end but it didn't look much like a fire escape. She moved down the hallway, keeping an eye open for anything that could be bad. All the doors here seemed to be unharmed, and the carpet was dry. None of the doors were open, there were about three on the right and four on the left, but none of them concerned her.

She felt like she was breaking a rule, or going against the will of whatever had imprisoned her in this town. She was challenging the way things were meant to be and she wouldn't have been surprised if this was a dead end. What could be doing this to her? Something seriously screwy was happening in this town and she didn't like it one bit. Something had to be behind this because this sort of stuff doesn't just happen.

She moved past one door, and then another. Soon she was at the end of the corridor. She listened carefully for any strange sounds but didn't hear any, she couldn't hear anything besides her own breathing. She breathed deeply and reached for the handle. She didn't know what to expect, so she just shut her eyes and turned the knob.

Sarah swung the door open and let the light wash over her. She was outside, and it seemed that the fire escape was intact. She could even see a door on the ground level below her that led into the store next door. Upon closer inspection, the fire escape led to the lot that the Insurance building was on, and out onto the road. The lot next door with the gun store was fenced off, and if she got into it she knew that she wouldn't be able to just walk out, she might have to go out to the street through the front door. The next door building had a back yard, of a sort, which might lead to an area out the back, but she didn't bother to think that it would be open to the road, or that would defeat the purpose of having built the fence.

She thought about it thoroughly. What if she couldn't get out along Nathan Avenue? That would be a serious setback, and then what would she do? She didn't want to think about it. She decided that she had to at least try and get into the gun store to get more ammo and then if she couldn't get out just shoot the lock on the gate and go out onto the street. She also noticed that, while the building was two stories, it didn't have a fire escape on the second floor. She checked the joints with of the fire escape to the wall and found that they were all, at least, attached. She tested it with one foot, and then both before walking out onto it.

She could see that she was on the other side of the black, wire wall. She couldn't help but see the writing on this side which said "No, now you can't go back". She ignored it defiantly, knowing that she would get out no matter what, even if she had to swim across the lake. She kept watching it as she stepped onto the first step of the ladder.

Who would keep writing things like that? Who could possibly know that she will not escape? She put her foot onto the next step of the ladder, hearing a quiet groan. Could it be the same person who wrote the other notes? She took the next step down and heard it crackle and groan a little more. Were these messages really there? Were they just in her head? She went to take the next rung of the ladder and then heard a loud groan.

Now was the moment where she had to make a decision, would she go through the gun store or just go to the main road? She decided to go to the gun store and got ready to jump across, over the fence. Her feet were near the edge of the fence, and she put out a foot to put down onto it. She could feel the wood against the underside of her shoe, it seemed secure. She now had her back to the ladder and her hands on the sides of it. The rust was wearing off and every time she moved she could hear the fire escape groan. She lowered herself down until she was in a crouched position. It was still a good six foot drop to the ground, and she felt a little scared. She started to push against the ladder and move over her other foot to the top of the fence. The ladder swayed a little, not attached to anything but the top, where the rust was so thick you couldn't tell where the ladder ended and the bolts holding it on began.

Her body now was positioned above the fence, Sarah delicately balancing on the top. She still had one hand on the ladder, and the other now clutched the top of the fence, like some sort of giant, bony bird. Awkwardly, she moved her foot from the ladder to the top of the fence. The fence had a flat top, so she started to slide her feet out to the right, and then over, so she was sitting on the fence. Her arm absently clung to the ladder. It had stopped groaning.

She heard a sound on the other side of the fence, behind her a little. It was fairly quiet, but her ear was almost tickled by the noise. She turned to her left, toward the road, but didn't see anything. She thought about the fence again. All she had to do was bring her arm down and lower herself down. She heard the noise again, this time louder and more distinct. The smack was like a slap in the face.

Unmistakable, she didn't know whether to turn or not. Her gun was in her belt now, and she had no free hands to grab it with. She felt her eye creeping around to the right, panning until it saw what was surely the shadow of the creature. It's silhouette stood out in the fog, even in the shadow of the building. She kept still and tried to keep quiet when she heard the sniffing begin. But then she felt dread grip her around the neck and threaten to snap it when she heard a much less welcome sound than that of the sniffing.

The slop was louder than ever, louder than she thought a noise could be, again she couldn't ignore it. It pounded inside her head this time, directly onto her brain. She could feel the sweat running down her back, along her backbone, and across her goosebumps. She looked up as she saw what she had been hoping not to see. On the fire escape was a large black shadow, oozing liquid through all of the gaps in the grate. It dripped all around Sarah, miraculously not touching her.

She heard the fire escape squeal under the weight, and she realised that she had to make a decision very quickly. She pushed away from the ladder and fell over the fence. She landed against the wall and hit her head on it, the world blurred away, as she saw the ladder snap off and hit the fence, the fire escape collapsing first on the near side and then falling into the gap behind the fence.


	9. Dead Bunnies

When she awoke, her sense of smell had changed again. She was afraid to open her eyes, fearing that she had once again returned to the nightmare world. She could smell blood, and it was thick, her head hurt on the top of it and her legs were stinging on her shins. Had the fire escape landed on her? She forced her eyes open, but she found that it was dark, but not the nightmare world.

She was laying on the ground, the fire escape having crushed the fence. If it wasn't for the wall on which she'd hit her head, she would probably have been crushed herself. The blood she could smell was her own, as she must have smacked her head against the wall. She felt it. It didn't hurt to touch, and the blood had dried. She crawled out from under the fence and looked at her legs. She had just scraped them on the rough ground, because they had big grazes on them, but no serious damage. She felt sorry for herself, although she was lucky to be alive. She checked that all of her stuff was still with her as she resisted the urge to light up. Her smokes were there, more crushed than ever, and the map had a large tear in it. She still had both pieces, but it looked a lot worse now. The gun was lost, easily visible, but trapped under the wreck, there was no way she would ever be able to reach it.

She pulled herself to her feet with the help of the fence. The fog seemed to have disappeared, although the atmosphere was still cool and humid. The dark wasn't comforting though, as she had been content in seeing only what was in front of her. The fence was pushed over just next to the door, conveniently allowing her to open the door still. The door wasn't locked, now raising questions in her head. She let them go unanswered for now, as she reached for her little light. In the fall she must have knocked a battery loose or something, because it took a little shaking to light up.

She appeared to be in a small laundry type area. To her right was a small desk, and a small fridge. The door was open and the inside looked to be coated in blood. She turned to her left to see what was there. A large cupboard with a sink was at the opposite end and a cupboard was to her right. There was a door which lead further into the building next to the sink. Everything in the building was covered in a thick layer of dust, and the windows were covered in dirt or dried mud or something.

She spotted a small blue backpack on the floor. In contrast to the rest of the room, it had no dust or anything on it. She moved over to it and picked it up. It didn't appear to have anything in it, but not in the mood for surprises, she decided to open it anyway. She shone the torch into the bag and found an envelope. It didn't have a name or address on it, and was still sealed.

Sarah felt a slight comfort in opening a letter. It is how she had received the word about her work, despite the convenience of telephone, she had always received her jobs in the mail. She could feel her teeth unclench and the pain in her head seemed distant as she turned the letter over and began to peel the edge. She got it open, and fished out a small piece of paper, no bigger than the page of a small notepad. She flipped it around to read it:

"You're a fat ugly failure, go kill yourself".

These words ripped through her like rounds from a machine gun. She could feel something welling in the corner of her eye. She threw the paper over her shoulder and dropped the envelope. She slung the bag onto her shoulder and stormed up to the door and grabbed the handle. She could barely feel the cold of the steel handle as she turned it, rage pumping through her. She soon came to her senses when she opened the door.

The room was quiet. She was so overwhelmed by what she saw that the first thing she processed was the lack of noise. The next was the giant hole in the wall opposite her. The wall looked like it had collapsed, or a car had driven through it. There were bricks everywhere. In the center of the room was a sort of dining room table. It was almost round and covered in boxes of shotgun shells. On the top of the pile was a shotgun. But most disturbing of all was the walls. They were covered in shelves, floor to ceiling, each shelf packed with hundreds of rabbit dolls. The rabbits were sort of cute; they had pink fur and little white faces, smiling. They seemed somehow creepy though, their eyes seemed to follow her.

It looked like someone had exploded in the room, not everything, but a number of things were absolutely caked in dried blood. She couldn't smell it though, but she knew what it was. In the corner to her right was a television set and a flight of stairs, leading to the second floor. She walked over to the table, started to pull the bag off her shoulder, all the while looking at all of the rabbits in panic. They had somehow managed to get into her head and now she could take her eyes off them. She used her left hand to undo the zip with the bag held between her knees. When she got to the table she started shoving shells into the bag. She felt she had enough now and started to do up the bag, still looking around at all of the bunnies on the wall. Some were covered in blood, but most were clean. The room remained silent, except for the clinking of the shells in the bag as she slung it back over her shoulder. She reached out for the shotgun, but she felt the air change.

She froze in her place as the air filled with a very low pitch buzz. Her attention had now completely left the bunnies, who were being lit up themselves, as the television slowly got brighter and brighter with white light. There was no sound this time, but the static made it's own sound, locked away in Sarah's head, the memory of that noise grew louder than the TV ever could. It was growing in intensity, the brightness of the television, until she heard a noise. It was as loud as a gunshot right in her ear, the sound of the stairs creaking.

Like a zombie, the man in the white coat started thudding his way down the stairs, one slow step at a time. He was still carrying the knife from before, but this time his entire coat appeared to be soaked in blood. He eventually reached the bottom of the stairs and turned toward her. She was trapped in a nightmare, unable to move. She became aware of his other hand now, the one without the knife in it. Now he had a large revolver in his hand.

He stood in front of the television, his silhouette against the static like a telepathic ray into her mind. She broke free and reached for the shotgun. She dragged it behind her with her left hand and ran for the hole in the wall. The man raised his gun and aimed it at the wall. He fired a shot and a shelf of bunnies fell off the wall and onto the ground in a cloud of stuffing. He aimed again, at Sarah this time and pulled the trigger. He missed her by a fair way, but the gunshot was like an explosion and she felt the voice in the back of her head which she hadn't heard in a long time.

"You can't run fast enough, you will die if you can't run faster". She tried to ignore it as another shelf fell off the wall. As she got to the hole she realised that it wasn't as big as she had thought and that she would have to duck down to get through. As she did she heard another gunshot, this one closer, it knocked a loose brick out of the wall over the hole. Her heart was now more like a snare drum, pounding sharply in her ears.

She got to the hole and crouched down, fitting between the low, brick wall and the bricks which were piled up underneath it. She had to slow down for this and she saw his shimmering figure raise the gun one more time. This time he fired the bullet and the brick pile shuddered, like a wounded animal being shot. Sarah managed to get through the hole, but fell onto the ground outside it. There was about a six foot cement driveway and a wooden fence. The fence had a large gap in it like a car had ploughed through it. Through the hole she could see a steel door. She picked herself up and began sprinting for the door, the dry blood on her shins now covered in dirt and her head pounding harder than ever. She made it through the fence and, after checking the ground for debris, decided to look back at the gap in the wall behind her.

She could see the man climbing through the hole, his torso and head already through. He was wriggling like a worm, trying to push himself through, she saw a hand which didn't have the knife in it come out and grab onto the bricks. She thought about if she should shoot him or not. The shotgun might be loaded... she thought to herself. She came to a stop and spun around, holding the shotgun like an action movie star. She worked the pump, it was harder than it looked, offering some fair resistance. She took aim, watching the white monster squirming his way through the gap in the wall. She pulled the trigger and just heard a click.

The man looked toward her, blood running down his face, this time from his nose and a large cut on his bald head. He was now baring his teeth, which were stained with red, and worked harder at getting out, at getting to her. She decided to stop with this shotgun thing and to just get into the building. She turned again, hearing the bricks tumble down the pile as he got closer to her.

She ran toward the door, now only a few feet from her and reached out for the handle. It was a simple metal handle, like a cupboard handle and the door was a large heavy, metal door with a deadlock on it. She felt her heart twist in on itself as she thought of the chances the door was unlocked. Luckily, the door opened with a bit of effort, and she opened just enough for her to slip in the gap. She pulled the door back on the other side, not bothering to look at what was on the other side in the darkness. She flipped the deadlock and did up a bolt on the back.

She felt her bones grind against the door, in time with a large metal bang, like a battering ram against the door. She had been bracing the door, but now she was on the ground, on her knees, holding herself up with her hands. She had dropped the shotgun, the noise had scared her so much, she thought she had been shot. She pulled out the torch and looked at the door. The maniac on the other side of the door was pulling on the handle, she could see the door moving within it's locks. The pins in the door were beginning to groan. Her backpack had fallen off in the moment and sat now in front of the door. She sat, legs curled up near her chest, hands stretched out behind her to support her body. She sat in nervous wait as the door took battering after battering, even gunshots, but none of them managed to get through the thick steel door. Eventually the banging stopped and she pulled herself onto her feet.

Fumbling around for the light, she went to pick up the shotgun and the backpack. She sat with her back to the door, looking around the room, with the now dimming light. She was in some sort of staircase, underneath it most likely. It was made from large timber chunks and looked very old, dust was covering everything. She soon found that the stairway was actually in the room and that to her left she could go upstairs.

"Must be an old fire escape," she thought, as she noticed the only way to get out was via the stairs. She now turned her focus onto the shotgun.

The pain had manged to find it's way back into her head, and her nose was starting to flow with blood once again. She looked at the shotgun. She'd never used one before, and therefore had no idea on how to load one. She'd done some photo's for a rising band in the area, they had wanted her to hold a gun like this, but she was pretty sure that this wasn't the same model. Maybe there would be instructions on the boxes of ammunition. She quickly whipped the bag around to her side and pulled out one of the boxes. It didn't say anything very useful, but when she turned it upside down, she found what she was looking for.

"Pull back, insert round, push forward." It was handwritten in pen on the bottom of the box. Though somewhat disturbed by this, she decided to take the advice. She opened the box and looked at the shells. There was a little picture on the inside of the lid-flap. It showed a shotgun and a small slot over the trigger and had an arrow pointing to it. She pulled out a shell. It was heavy-ish, about the same as a couple of dollars in change. She pulled the pump back on the shotgun again. It wasn't as hard this time, proving lest resistant. She let it sit in the back position and put the shell into the slot, business end first and then pushing the brass back end further into the barrel, until it didn't stick out anymore. She closed the pump now, feeling the parts moving as she did.

She pointed the gun at the wall in front of her and squeezed the trigger. The sound was like a canon, she had had the butt of the gun against her hip and she felt the recoil surge through her body like a kick in the chest. She felt satisfied at this though and proceeded to load the gun again. She found that the shells sort of fit together and that she could fit four shells into the gun at a time. Once she was loaded, she stood up, using the door to lean up against, and sliding up it as her legs straightened out. She picked up the bag and put it back onto her shoulder, feeling the weight stressing her hip where the shotgun had slammed into it. She felt uneasy on her feet, her head now feeling like someone had put an ax through it. She held the shotgun in her left hand by the pump and had the torch shining once again on her surroundings.

It appeared that the only way for her to go was up the stairs. They groaned as she walked up them, every step she took sounded like she was walking the plank. She couldn't look down at them while walking and managed to trip a few times on the small overhang. She never fell over, all the time taking in her environment through the white spot created by the torch. The stairs went up about twenty steps and then reached a landing, where it turned around again to her right and went up five more steps to another floor.

The second floor had a light, it was a small hanging light bulb, sitting just above a door which was in the center of the wall. She made her way up the last of the steps and walked up to the door. She felt a lot safer with the shotgun loaded and tested, and didn't hesitate to open the door in the stupor of her pain. With her right hand she let go of the torch, letting it get caught by the bangle on her wrist. She put her hand out and grabbed the handle, feeling an eerie warmth from it. She swung the door towards herself and tightened her grip on the shotgun.

In the next room was a thick mist, but this wasn't a fog, it was steam, clinging to her skin. It dissipated pretty quickly when she opened the door and revealed the real nature of the room. It was a shower room, with an off-white tiled floor and shower heads coming out of the walls. It was a large room, about the size of three buses beside each other, and looking even bigger because there was nothing in the center of the room. The lights were on in here, emitting a soft, creamy glow. She took a step onto the tiles, and then another and she heard a slam. The door behind her had closed.

She wasn't too worried, the steam reminded her of having a shower herself and the room had another door at the opposite end. She walked up to the shower to her left and put down her bag and shotgun. She figured it would be pretty hard for something to sneak up on her in this room, and decided to have a shower, with her clothes on, to try and clean some of her clothes and cuts. She leaned the shotgun up against the wall, balanced in a small groove between the tiles. She didn't think too much about taking her shoes off, she just wanted to get a little clean.

She reached out and turned the taps with both hands, the hot and the cold. The shower head ran up out of a pipe that came from the floor, and she heard the sounds of water moving up the pipework. She prepared herself for the wave of water that was about to spill out over her and make her feel one small taste of home. A small amount of water leaked from the shower head, no more than a drip, before it clogged up. She turned the handles more, but nothing came out. She picked up the shotgun and bag, and went to try the next shower, which was a good six feet away. After a few steps she heard the sounds of all the pipes running water through them. One by one the showers let out a large drip and then clogged up.

By now Sarah was unsure of what was happening, so she grabbed the bag and the shotgun and went to the center of the room, gun at the ready. Soon the taps began shaking, until eventually they fell off one by one and the shower heads with them. Out of the burst pipe spilled thick, red blood, which covered the ground in front of them and ran into the drain. She spun around, confused by what she saw, unsure whether to leave or stay, as the rose colored water now seemed to call to her.


	10. Fire and Smoke

"You'll never get out of here unless you let go." A voice rang out from the opposite end of the room. In front of the door was a figure, in white, bound by bandages from head to toe, her body had blood coming out and soaking the the patches on her left side, and bloody stumps where the hands should be. On top of her pearly white hair, which covered most of her face, was a small red and black bishops hat. Her face appeared to be covered in what could only be described as a thick, black, pulsating spiderweb.

"He will come again, he has told me, and you will fuel it." The blood hitting the tiles seemed to die down just for her voice, otherwise it sounded like a crimson waterfall. Sarah pumped the shotgun, the sound echoing throughout the room.

"Are you doing this to me? Who is that man in the white?" She opened her mouth and the words just flew out before she was even aware she was talking.

"That isn't important, you'll know what you have to do by the end." She turned and walked out the door opposite, holding out a bloody stump to open the door. Sarah was sure she heard a wince coming from the shower heads as she touched the door. The woman pushed it open, leaving a bloody streak across the glossy wood. It quietly snapped shut behind her and almost immediately the showers stopped. The rest of the blood gurgled down the drain, leaving a little in the cracks.

Again the pain in her head came back and started pulsing in her head, this time so strong it made her feel like vomiting. Her head started spinning on her shoulders, like she was revolving on the spot. She fell to her knees and smacked her palms on the ground, dropping the shotgun. She crawled over to the nearest drain and threw up all over it. She just let it flow, the smell climbing up her delicate nasal passages, the taste of bile burning her tongue. The dark brown liquid went mostly into the drain, but some of it missed. She barely had time to breath before the second bout left her body. The last of it spilled into the drain and she felt a wave of relief surge through her body.

She could taste the vomit, and smell it, but she knew that there wasn't a whole lot she could do. She put her hand under her shirt and pulled it up to her mouth, wiping away what she could from her lips, leaving dark stains on her pale yellow shirt. She knew it wasn't very lady like, but given the circumstances, she felt it was ok. She grabbed the shotgun and thought about trying the showers again as she grabbed her bag. She knew that it would probably just bring that mummified freak back if anything at all, and she definitely wouldn't be able to have a shower.

She swung the backpack on her shoulder and fed her other arm through the strap, this time having it on both shoulders. She clutched the shotgun by the pump and started moving toward the door. It seemed to take a long time to get to the other side of the room, seconds turned to minutes as she staggered across tiles, finally exhausted by her trip, ready to give up and rest. There would be few places in this town safe enough to rest in, she thought, she was lucky enough to have been left alone in the caravan for so long. She no longer cared about what time of day it was, whether it was night or day, fog or dark, just as long as it wasn't the nightmare world, which she suspected it was turning into now, if not already.

She finally reached the door, again putting out her right hand to turn the handle, swinging the door outward. There was no sign of the bandaged woman, no blood on the floor or walls. She wasn't surprised, she had suspected that the woman would leave as quickly and subtly as she had entered.

In this room there was a single light bulb, swinging outside of a window to the right. It shifted the light around the room, reminding her of pirate ships she'd seen in movies. In the center of the room was a hole in the floor and a shiny metal pole going through it. There were extremely faded posters on the wall of barely dressed women and a table with broken, white helmets and yellow coats. She decided that she must be in a fire station, and that down the pole would be the garage, and possibly a way out, or at least first aid kits. She looked hastily around the room impatiently, not really seeing anything, no doors, no cupboards, no nothing.

She walked up to the pole and grabbed the torch. She looked down into the hole, seeing nothing but the concrete below. The pole went all the way to the ground and that was all she could see. She reached out for the silvery post and put her arms around it. The shotgun still gripped tightly, she took her feet off the ground and slid down it slowly. She looked absently into the darkness as she went down under the next floor. She got to the bottom before she realised she had dazed off, and stood in the semi-luminated spot near the pole. She let go of the pole and put her back to it, getting the shotgun back to her side. She grabbed the torch and shone it around.

She was correct, it was a fire station, she was looking at the side of a dark red firetruck. It looked untouched for many years, covered in a layer of dust and cobwebs. She spun around, her back against the pole. The firetruck went all the way up to a large white sheet of plastic which continued to the wall, the wall came around and - she heard a high pitched chirp behind her, knees faltering.

The sound was familiar, but Sarah doubted that chain wire or a cage would be able to protect her this time. She knew the gun was pumped and ready to go. She didn't know how this creature would react to her presence but she remembered how the monster in the cage had tried to bite her, it was probably only a matter of seconds before she was fighting with the beast on the floor. She still had the torch lit up, as she had it before, she slowly turned anticlockwise on the spot, blind eye first, to see if she would be able to see the monster before it saw her.

The light slid over the featureless wall to the wall at the opposite end of the fire truck. First she saw a boot, then a leg and then a hulking, brown beast bent over the body on the floor. It was buzzing and twitting excitedly as it moved it's face over the body. It could have been sniffing, eating or just tasting the body, but when the torch lit it up it jumped and flicked it's head over to see the source. It's head was shaped like that of a human, it's squinting eye's looking only beadier next to the large, snapping, spider-like claws which surrounded a gaping hole which housed a whipping and snapping tongue. It had blood running down it's face, skin stretched into a twisted shape, like it's skull had been moved within it's head. It's talon like hands slid along the floor, gliding around, finding a good spot and supporting it's weight on it.

Sarah decided she wasn't going to find out how friendly the beast was, she took a step forward with her left and then with her right and grabbed the handle of the shotgun with her right hand. She knew it was lined up and she pulled the trigger. The sound slammed on the metal in the room, reverberating violently, trying to escape. She must have been five yards or so from the monster and it managed to take all of the shot. It's body ripped in half, splitting down the middle and covering the wall in blood, there was no twitching or noises, the creature was just dead and unmoving. The body behind the beast had moved a little toward the wall when the remains fell over it. Her ears rang with the shot, she knew that it might not be the last in the garage.

There was no way around the other end of the truck, so she had to move toward the body, the combined smell of both bodies was slowly creeping up her nostrils. The truck wasn't faded like most of the other stuff she'd encountered, instead it was a deep, blood red, almost too dark to be a firetruck. Some parts were shinier than others, but otherwise it was like brand new. Each step toward the bodies and the gap were taken up by scanning the truck for anything useful, first aid kits, weapons, tools. Anything that could help her. She saw the sign she'd been hoping to see, a simple white cross on a small red panel.

It was about halfway along and had a clean looking silver handle. She stepped over to it, put the shotgun between her knees and reached out for the handle. She went to grab it but missed the first time, not reaching far enough. She felt anger shoot across her face; she'd managed to teach herself how to judge objects depth, but she still had her vulnerable moments. She tried again, making sure she had her hand on the door and sliding it down to the handle. It had no button or catch, she just had to pull it open.

It wasn't stiff at all, she felt its smooth action, folding up against the side of the truck. Inside was a small case, a lot like a tin lunch box, with a red cross on it. She grabbed it, stretching her fingers and shaking it. It had something in it, she could hear the paper and plastic inside shifting against each other. She put it back down and slung the bag around on her shoulder to the front. She unzipped it and grabbed the case again, putting it on top of the pile of shells. She thought momentarily about reloading again, but decided against it. She zipped up the bag again and shifted it to her back.

A snarling sound filled the air, buzzing around her head, coming from nowhere in particular. It tickled the inside of her ears, like a slimy, lumpy tongue. She quickly picked the shotgun up from between her knees, careful not to let go of the flash light. She thought thoroughly about how she could grip the gun ready to shoot and hold the light. She gripped the handle of the shotgun with her left hand instead this time, and gripping the torch against the pump of the shotgun. It cast a shadow over the vague circle of brightness, but allowed her enough to see around her.

She spun around, crouched down to see under the truck and tried to look over it. The sound was like a band saw, cutting into the sides of her head. It was a heavy, gargling breathing that reminded Sarah of a tiger. She noticed that the top of the truck had a large white sheet separating the two sides, acting more like a dividing wall. She moved uneasily around to the back of the fire engine, moving toward the narrow gap between end of the truck and the wall behind it. The bodies and their accompanying smell made the gap even more uninviting. Again with the sound in her ears she walked beside the engine, zeroing in on her goal. She stepped over the first body and then the second, feeling an aura of cold dampen her leg. She placed her foot on the floor and then looked around the corner.

Something absorbed the light a little around there, making it a little bit darker, but noticeably. She moved around, edging closer and closer into the darkness. Around the other side of the truck she thought she could make out another large gray sheet reaching from floor to ceiling. The light started to die down, as the sound grew louder, right in her ear, she kept turning to try and catch the creator of this noise, always a second too late. She felt her legs moving faster, she wasn't lifting her feet properly, she felt herself kicking things on the ground, some were hard and sounded like wood as they scooted across the floor, some were softer and glided along the floor like beads on wet glass. She could hear the sounds of her feet slapping on the ground in puddles as she walked down the corridor. The sound was boring into her eardrum, like someone drilling into her brain. She tried not to think about the sound, no longer able to tell where it ended and began.

She still had the shotgun against her shoulder, ready to fire. She'd given up looking at the floor, she knew there was nothing down there that she wanted to see. The things she kicked now squished slightly when she kicked them, sliding across the floor. She was now taking every step in a puddle of something, something she was sure she wouldn't like. She was walking very fast now, further and further into the darkness. She made it to the end of the other firetruck, this time the front end left just enough room for her to fit her skinny body through, having to move the shotgun a little to get through. She couldn't make out any features of the truck, nothing more than how it was almost completely non reflective. She made it out to the side and found a space no wider than the average hallway between this truck and the outside wall.

By now her shoes felt damp with some cold liquid. She didn't see the point in having the light on anymore, it couldn't be of any more use to her. She felt lucky that the area wasn't completely black. She could make out a little of the wall to her left and the truck to her right. It stank now, the smell of the bodies seemed to have followed her and the sound was now ringing in her ears, stuck on repeat. She couldn't know if the sound had finished but it was still growing in intensity, in contrast to her belief that there was no way that the sound could get any louder. She felt the darkness transfer into her, cooling her skin and made her brain feel like jelly.

She was sure she'd gone insane, she should have just braved the trail through the woods, even if she got lost she couldn't have stayed in the town forever. There was any number of things that she could have done which would have resulted in her being anywhere else but here. When she got out of this crazy town, she vowed that she would find the one who brought her here and stick his balls in a vice. She could feel slight heat on her face, the floor getting slightly stickier with each step. Her bag started to get heavier and the sound in her ears started getting harsher, angrier, biting at her ear lobe.

She could see something shiny in front of her, it was a large flat something. She stumbled closer, the heat now taking it's toll and making her shoes stick to the floor. She fought her way against the floor, and heat and sweat and noise and finally reached what she could now see was a door.

The shiny thing was a black, dirty window. She moved the shotgun around on the door's surface and found the handle on her right side. She held the gun with one hand and went to open it. It wouldn't open. Now the heat was really taking effect, her nose started to bleed again, sweat was now running freely down her face, making her feel impossibly greasy. The sound in her ears lost definition, it was now just an intolerably loud buzzing which peaked and bowed back down rapidly. She could feel the gun getting warmer and warmer in her left hand. She heard the distant echoes of her knife slipping through her belt, clanging on the now shapeless ground.

She decided that she couldn't stay in the shed anymore and grabbed the gun again. She pumped the gun again and blew a hole in the door. It wasn't that big, but she pumped it again and nailed the handle. She wanted to kick the door, but she just went to open it again, her shirt now soaking in sweat, she could nearly smell it against the surroundings. She opened the door and saw nothing on the other side. It was dark in the shed, but pitch black out there. She fumbled for the light and shone it out into the doorway. There was ground out there, she peeled her shoe off the sticky floor and walked the few more steps to the cold concrete. The door slammed behind her and she fell to her knees. She rolled onto her back and let herself breathe a little bit before closing her eyes and falling into blackness again.


	11. XC

She woke up coughing. Her impulses got the best of her this time, before she'd even opened her eyes she moved her hand down to her pocket and fished out the lighter and with the other hand a cigarette. She pushed it to her lips, which were now dry as a bone and hurt to form into the little shape she needed to breathe in the smoke. She gained the courage to open her eyes. It was daylight again, foggy, but still day. She felt her heart nearly trip over itself in the excitement.

She sat up, coughing roughly as she did, waiting for the wave to hit her. It was weak when it came, she felt distant as she smoked it, like she wasn't really here, just strapped into the matrix or something. She looked toward the door she'd come out of. It had black marks around the edges, and the glass window about the size of an A4 sheet of paper was cracked and covered in soot. She had been sleeping on her bag, and felt a small niggle in her back as she sat. She stretched her legs a little as she did this, trying to wake herself up.

Sarah didn't realize that time was getting away from her that much until she noticed she'd already smoked the cigarette down to the butt. She threw it at the door and looked around for the shotgun. She felt a lot safer with it now, like she didn't need keys anymore. She felt a little crazy doing it, but she was also surprised by her resourcefulness. She picked it up from her side with her right hand. It hurt a little her arm, so she pulled it up to have a look at it.

She spat a little as she gasped; a large, deep cut ran all the way up the inside of her forearm. She thought she must have done something in the fire station, but reconsidered as she saw how deep and clean it was. She felt the pain reach her head now, finding a spot next to all the other pain, but like most two year olds, trying to yell over the top to get the most attention. She rummaged through her backpack looking for the first aid kit.

Inside was the same goodies which she found in the caravan. There was the oxydol, which she poured onto the cut, feeling it burn the surface before foaming a little. She grabbed the bandage and wrapped her arm up tight, feeling her fingers tighten just a little. Had this happened in her sleep? Surely she would have been woken up by this? Was she drugged? Who would do something like that? She finished off the bandage as these thoughts banged around clumsily in her head. The bandage soaked in a little red before the bleeding stopped. She found some large patches in the kit too, and decided to stick them on her legs. She used the rest of the burning solution and stuck all of the patches on her shins. Feeling like a queen for once, she took the remaining contents of the kit, just a few cotton balls and wiped her face, clearing up all the blood and sweat and dirt.

Throwing away the empty tin, she got up, now smelling something which she hadn't before. The smell of fire, or of smoke anyway. She knew from her childhood near here that the town had a lot of trees around it and in it, and hoped that it wasn't a forest fire. She sniffed through her bloody nose for a bit before deciding that it was probably nothing. She noticed now that she was in a small alleyway behind the fire station. It had a concrete and wire fence to one side and a small fence to the other. She could almost see a road at the end.

She collected her things and started to walk to the roadside, and she felt the smell getting stronger. She was curious to know where the smell was coming from, so she started looking around. It was now intense, clouding her head. She couldn't tell if she was walking through fog or smoke, until she found the source. Behind the short fence on her left was a large, shapeless, black mass. This wasn't a monster though, smoke was pouring out of this. It looked like someone had been burning garbage outside of the garage. She saw burnt out drums and cans which she thought might have contained oil or other flammable things.

"That must have been that heat" she thought aloud in a whisper, as she found herself at the fence now, peering in and closely analyzing the various junk. It looked like the contents of a house or something, couches, televisions, various pots and pans, a bathtub. "It doesn't matter" she thought as she moved away from the fence and toward the street again.

She hoped that she was at Nathan Avenue this time, as she was sick of trying to navigate this towns back streets, simple as they were. She slowly moved to the corner looking for a street sign. "Lindsey St" said one, and "Vachss Rd" on the other. She quickly whipped out her map and tried to find Vachss Road on it. At first she thought that it didn't exist, but she looked harder and found it to be halfway along Lindsey street, a sort of bendy road which led up to Nathan Avenue. It looked to her like a shortcut.

She looked along Vachss Road into the fog. It had single story buildings on both sides, one as plain as the other. One was a yellow sort of color and had small windows, the other was simply gray and had a roller door halfway along. She started to shift one foot in front of the other like she'd absent mindedly done before. She felt she was losing her grip a little, understandably, however she was acting a little more out of impulse every time she did something. She walked along the road, not seeing anything unusual or threatening. She felt herself relax, a fraction at a time, until she reached a small, waist height fence to her left.

There was nothing in there, it looked like it was someones little backyard, as cramped as it was. There was a wooden table to one side and a small, beaten up dog house to the other. There was even a barbecue. She suddenly felt alone, on edge and frightened. She hadn't seen anyone, not a fugitive hiding out, a misguided youth squatting in the houses. She felt that the fog was the only thing that could give her a little peace. She let it wrap around her, like a security blanket, she felt like a child not allowed to watch the news because it could be disturbing.

She kept walking, realizing that she'd long ago walked past the small courtyard. She was now walking on road which didn't have anything on either side, it was fairly loose gravel. A barbed wire fence was on her left, strung up between thin pieces of rotted wood. The other side was just the back of buildings, clearly the road had started curving around, taking Sarah for the ride.

She soon found herself at the opening of a small tunnel, simply running underneath Nathan Avenue. A sign was on the inside of it, so she moved up to it to see if she could get onto the main road this way. It had two arrows, one pointing on through the tunnel, stating that she could follow that direction to get to Toluca Lake. The other said that she was, although she already knew, under Nathan Avenue.

She felt frustration creeping in to the pain center of her brain, as if the rest had been flooded and this was the only place feelings could go to be heard. She thought she might as well have a look at the lake, for old times sake. She continued down the trail, which eventually turned to loose gravel and then dirt, getting narrower all the time, turning from a possible road to a very cramped walkway. She could see that beyond the edge of the trees was a fence. This fence was different, it looked nasty, some sort of insane patchwork of chain wire, chicken wire and barbed wire, all weaved in together. She had thought about simply walking through the trees and eventually she should get out of the fog, and hopefully the town. While the fog was preferred, it was no freedom. It crept through her skin and lungs, grabbing and twisting and hooking her into this world. She felt more alone now, as she come out to a small clearing type area, which she hoped opened out onto the lake.

The fog thinned a little here, which surprised her, again proving that the fog was better than no fog in this town, it protected her from the truth, from seeing too far ahead. The soil got softer and thicker, eventually turning into nothing but a muddy bog. She moved through it, used to this sort of thing, and simply glad that it was burning her skin or something.

She saw through the now dissipating fog that the lake was a shadow of it's former beauty. It had no water in it, though small white flowers still grew along the bank. She got as close as she dared to the sudden drop off that signaled the start of the lake. It was empty, filled instead with a disgusting slop, muddy and smelly, it reminded her of a pig pen, extending as far as her eye could see. She now stood among the ankle height flowers, their root systems lending a little stability to the otherwise formless ground.

Her brain ground to a halt. Instead of feeling outrage at what she saw, instead of wondering why or how the lake could possibly be drained, she felt a wave of sadness for something lost. She felt a little fluffy rabbit of a memory being slaughtered thoroughly at this, her childhood raped. She wanted to get out of the town now, even if she had to build a giant slingshot and shoot herself out of the madness of Silent Hill, she was determined to get out.

She didn't realize, but she'd dropped her shotgun to her left, on the flowers, when she'd seen the unfathomable sight. She collected herself and bent down to pick it up, feeling the air behind her expand as if to push her into the gaping abyss. She noticed a white something underneath the gun, like a book. She picked it up and felt something heavy drop out. She quickly put her foot out onto it, fearing it would fall down the bank and be lost.

It was a golden handled knife, no bigger than the largest chopping knife at home in her kitchen or the knife which she'd had before, and had mysteriously gone missing somewhere. It looked very important, with many round symbols carved into the blade and handle. She opened her backpack and dropped it in, before turning her attention to the book again. It was opened to a page, written in an old form of English. She thought it was like Shakespeare a little bit, then again not really. It read:

"Speak. I am the Crimson One. The lies and the mist are not they but I. You all know that I am One. Yes, and the One is I. Believers hearken to me! Twenty score men and seven thousand beasts. Heed my words and speaketh them to all, that they shall ever be obeyed even under the light of the proud and merciless sun. I shall bring down bitter vengeance upon thee and thou shalt suffer my eternal wrath. The beauty of the withering flower and the last struggles of the dying man, they are my blessings. Thou shalt ever call upon me and all that is me in the place that is silent."

She couldn't read anymore. It just sounded like some religious nonsense. She flipped to the cover of the book which read, "The book of Crimson Ceremony." She flicked through it, seeing if anything caught her eye before she left it there on the bank. Most of it was just text, but there were a few images, usually of people being burned at the stake or being stabbed with spears. She did notice one thing though which made her stomach sink a little:

"St. Jennifer, killed by the Christians near Toluca Lake. Her remains were thrown into the lake, and are still there now, judging those who dare to cross."

It was accompanied by a picture of a woman, standing in a white robe, waist high in water. She had a knife and a halo. The hand written text appeared to be added some years later. Sarah shut the book, feeling as if knowing more would cause her brain to explode. She dropped the book, allowing it to drop down the bank into the lake. She picked up the shotgun with her left hand and turned around, ready to try and escape again. She marched her torn up legs and dirt coated body through the mud once more and back into the thick trees, her way only marked by a worn patch down the center.

She walked for what seemed like an eternity. She got a lot of thinking done in this time. Was the bandaged woman the ghost of St. Jennifer? She found the little hat to be more than a little similar to a cardinals hat, although it was colored differently. She found one of the few pleasant surprises in her recent memory as she approached the underpass again. There was a set of brick and cement stairs leading up toward the main road. Surely she shouldn't have thought that there wouldn't be any access from down by the road. She felt foolish as she readied herself to get up the stairs. She found them harder than she normally had, maybe dehydration and starvation had taken it's toll. She hadn't really notice the feeling in her stomach for some food, but the lack of water seemed to make her brain dry out, a lot like an old sponge. She made her way up the dozen or so stairs and found herself on a fairly wide, two lane road.

There were guard rails on each side, though barely visible through the fog. She felt like she must be on some sort of mountain, low clouds crossing the road like enormous inflatable cows. She made her way along the road, feeling lightheaded and even swinging her shotgun by her side. She found the time to check her glass eye, which had been off at an odd angle, probably since she woke up under the fence at the gun store. She didn't like thinking about the gun store. She'd got a fair haul from there, but it nearly cost her life. She had no idea how she'd managed to control her body and just get through the hole in the wall. How was that man here? Was everyone here a basket case? Could they see the creatures?

She didn't trouble herself with these thoughts, instead concentrating on what she would do once she got home. First she would see what the date was, and then she'd buy a watch with the date on it. Maybe go and get the gun registered. Go for a long drive somewhere sunny. Go and get a tan. She noticed her skin was extremely white, especially considering the amount of dirt she'd gone through. There were spots where the dirt was more like a scab, protecting the skin below it, but most of her body was somewhat clean.

She walked slowly and quietly along the left side of the road, not too far from the guard rail. She could see the trees bobbing down, until eventually the road was almost completely above them. She hadn't noticed the incline, but it must have been steep if she had managed to get higher than some of the trees. She kept walking, not daring to look up at the sky, but looking up slightly nonetheless. She was starting to think about food, her mothers roast vegetables and drinking a chocolate milkshake. She normally wouldn't, but she figured she'd probably spend a while in hospital once she got picked up anyway.

She stopped dead. It was like seeing the lake again. There was a large split in the road, much like before, as if she was at the edge of the world. There was nothing beyond this clean cut fissure, nothing beneath it, nothing through the fog that she could see. Sarah sat on the edge, like she had with the bridge, her legs over the side. She wouldn't get over this break in the road so easily this time though. She felt as if she could just fall in and see what was at the bottom. She felt uneasy, the fronts of her legs tingling, in anticipation of some sort of tragedy. She lay on her side, her legs curled up underneath her, as if she were in bed.

She felt something crawl down her face. It tickled, it was a tear. The stress had finally gotten to her and she felt around with her bandaged arm for the last cigarette. Her greasy hair swayed in the slight breeze, her heart finally feeling the weight of the trip and struggling a little. She fumbled around for the lighter and took a quick look at it before going to light the smoke. She stuffed it between her lips, her scar now completely concealed by her hair. She lit the end and breathed in. It did no good this time, she just wanted to roll off the cliff. This had been her only way out. She just let the smoke blow out, feeling a burn in her throat. Ash just fell off the end without prompting, whirling down into the chasm.

This smoke took it's time, lasting longer than the previous. It gave her time to think, time she didn't want or need. It would be so convenient to just drop off this cliff. Maybe this whole thing was a game show, like in that movie the Truman Show. Maybe the only way out was to die. Maybe she could walk across the missing section like it was there. She let the questions go unanswered and just kept asking, getting more outrageous, more demented. Eventually the cigarette was down to the butt, leaving Sarah unsatisfied.


	12. Incomplete Memories

She lay still for what seemed like a long period of time. Maybe it was a few seconds, maybe a couple of hours, but she eventually decided she couldn't lay like this any more and sat up, pulled out the map, lay the shotgun to her left. She looked for other routes out, mentally crossing off the ways she'd tried. She still wasn't sure about the Rendell street exit. The bridge where she'd come in was broken, but maybe she could still find some way across.

Her eye turned to the bottom of the torn pieces. There were several streets leading off the bottom of the map. How had she never noticed this before? She decided that there still was hope, that she may be able to find a way out. She knew that there as a similar hole to the one at her feet at the end of Lindsey Street, so she decided to start by going down Neely Street. She got up, swaying a little as she did. She didn't feel like her life was in danger, or rather that her life was in any more danger than it had been, while she was standing near the edge. She picked up the shotgun, and with a somewhat renewed, though still damaged outlook, she started to put one foot in front of the other in the direction of the town.

Silent Hill had won again, but all it did was make her want to escape more, and seek out any hope of safe passage back home. She walked along the center line, confident that nothing would come and hurt her. The gun was loaded and ready to use against anything which would try to mess with her. She was tired, despite having had a fair amount of sleep during her stay. She was tired of not knowing what time it was, what day it was. She felt like she might as well be walking through the desert, at least there wouldn't be any creepy monsters there to mess with her head. She kept on putting one foot in front of the other.

She heard a noise behind her, sort of like something was rolling down the road. She was now only about eighty yards from the crack, it was still nearly in view despite the fog. The sound grew louder and louder, but still nothing was coming. She decided that it must have been nothing important, maybe something off the side of the road. She turned back the way she was walking and saw it out of the corner of her eye. A large white shiny thing flew right by her right ear, missing her by mere inches. It slid into her view a little more and she saw that it was a filthy gray bus. It had large burn marks all up the side and looked to be running on only a few pumped tires.

Her heart finally made itself audible, sounding like a double kick drum at high speed. Her mouth opened itself and she started gasping for air. Sweat ran down her forehead at the same time, her knees about to collapse. She let them, and found herself on the ground, her face down to the road. The sound disappeared into the distance, until she heard the sound of tires squealing, glass breaking and then metal grinding along road.

Her head snapped up at this sound. What if people were on the bus? Unlikely she thought, seeing as there is no way the bus could have come from that direction. She decided to check it out, maybe she would be able to find someone who would make her doubt her sanity so heavily. She tucked the shotgun into the strap of her bag, so that it sat horizontal. She started out walking, but soon started jogging, and then running, despite her shortness of breath. She let herself hope that people were on the bus. Maybe they would have a phone? Maybe someone would notice that they'd gone missing. She started to inflate with excitement.

She soon found the bus. It had fallen over onto its side somehow and slid along the road, until it hit the guard rail which wasn't that heavily damaged. She figured that she wouldn't be able to get in through the door, as it had fallen onto its right side, with the roof to the guard rail. The back window looked intact, so she tried to pull it out, with her fingers. It didn't work so she pulled out the knife and tried to pry it out with that. The blade wasn't very clean, unlike her other knife, which had always gleamed in whatever light was available. Nonetheless, it did the job, allowing the fire escape window to fall out onto the ground in front of her. She caught it with her foot before it hit the ground. She didn't care if it broke, but she thought she might as well let it down easy now. She slid her toes out of it and stepped on top.

It was a coach of some kind, luckily it didn't have any poles from the seats to the ceiling, allowing her to walk rather comfortably down the isle. She didn't like what she saw in the diminished light. There was blood everywhere, smeared all over the walls, soaked into the seats, there were dark brown, rotting pieces of whatever all over the ground. She felt sick at the sight, sure she'd seen an eyeball on the floor among some particularly nasty sludge. The windows on the bottom were all broken, as were the top ones. She made her way to the front of the bus, the bloodbath gradually getting thicker and more gruesome. Eventually it looked as if the walls had been painted with blood, and small chunks slithered down the walls, like snails, coating everything in a thin layer of fresh red slime. She felt slightly dizzy, but otherwise fine. She was sure now that in the fire station the chunks on the floor were bloody, rotten hunks of flesh.

At the front of the bus, now visible to her, was a body of a man without a head. It appeared it must have exploded or something to coat the walls like this. The front windscreen was in shards, each as bloody as the last, whether it was still in the windscreen or not. The body was holding onto a newspaper, neatly folded, and in contrast to its uniform, not a drop of blood on it. She saw that some of the limbs of the body must have been broken, the angles they were twisted into. She crouched down, the bag relying on her balance. She pulled out the newspaper and had a look.

"November 15th, 1975

Bus tragedy kills fifteen - one survivor."

She stopped there to look at the picture. She was sure the little girl in the picture looked familiar. She couldn't have been any older than five years old, with bandages all over the left side of her face, and a cast on her arm. Her parents were behind her, each with a hand on her shoulder, they shared a look which conveyed both extreme relief and sorrow through their half smiles. In the corner was another picture, of a horribly mangled bus off the side of a road. There was a lot of smoke in the black and white photograph, and a fire crew looked tired and hopeless as they cut up the bus.

The article read: "On November 5th, 1975, a Silent Hill bus bound for Brahms lost control and ran off the Nathan Avenue exit after rolling over 4 times, killing 15 people. The only survivor was 4 year old Sarah Singer, who was returning home from the resort town with her older brother. While her brother, Benjamin Singer, aged 14, died from injuries sustained during the crash, Sarah was lucky to survive with a shattered elbow and severe lacerations to her face. After the bus came to a stop near the side of the road, it caught fire. It was then that the fire department arrived and rescued Sarah."

There was more but she didn't want to read it. The girl in the photo was her, thirty-four years ago, which was impossible for her twenty-five years. She scanned the article over and over, trying to make sense of it all, trying to find the loop hole where it meant she really was her age. She saw her hands shaking, as she slowly scrunched the paper up, holding it tighter until she ripped it in half down the middle.

She hadn't noticed, but now the bus was covered in black. The soot over the seats and piles of ash where there had previously been hunks of flesh just made her more confused. She held onto the little control she had and picked up her things, holding them close to her chest awkwardly. As she walked out the end of the bus she felt coolness wash over her, emitting from the seats, stepping in a few puddles of water in the now scorched broken glass.

She managed to stumble past the broken glass at the makeshift entrance before falling to her knees and then rolling onto her side, peering out into the dense fog which had become the town of Silent Hill, and now her clouded memory. She clumsily pushed the buttons on her mental calculator and did the math, working out how old she must be.

It wasn't a trick, she now remembered that day, coming home from the lake with Ben, eating ice cream and picking the flowers. They made her feel dizzy but she didn't care, she just fell over into the soft grass and gazed out into the lake. It would always turn time to go too early, her brother would pick up his fishing rod, and they would catch the bus home. He rarely caught anything, but his hat and tackle box still smelt strongly of fish. She would watch things float by her with her head absent mindedly vibrating with the glass window as it slowly made it's way around the streets of the resort town, picking people up and dropping them off. She remembered when the driver yelled and turned the bus off the road, how she banged around, being scratched by the pieces of broken glass and how her brothers weight had been thrown on her, slamming her against the side of the bus. She remembered the smell of her brothers tackle box melting, and the distant murmuring as he burnt to death while unconscious next to her, breathing heavily and then not at all, his skin burning like paper in the intense heat. She remembered waking up in hospital, and remembering what had happened.

"I'm thirty-seven years old." She whispered to herself, her palms to her thin biceps, the shotgun barrel up past her face, aiming at nowhere in particular. "What happened in the past thirteen years?" She riddled, not really that interested in what had happened; there could have been a nuclear war or she might be in a mental home under the influence of some heavy drugs, or in a regressive hypnosis session for all she knew. There was only one thing that she was sure of though:

"My modeling career is over."


	13. Scars

The experience of déjà vu is usually characterized by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of eeriness. The experience which people believe they are remembering is usually attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a strong feeling that it "actually happened" in the past. Sarah had always thought that déjà vu was just a feeling that happens for some reason, making her believe that she had experienced the event before. She always felt faint after, like she needed to lay down. All the times she'd had it, she'd never actually been able to predict what was going to happen before it happened, reinforcing the idea that it was simply a sensation.

She felt as if she'd been on the road before, lying down, clutching whatever she had on her for dear life, as if letting go would mean letting go to this world. As much as Sarah wished she could simply let go of Silent Hill, she was now afraid of what had happened in the lost years, something that no amount of fog, blood or darkness could compete with. She had no memory of what had happened over the last thirteen years, leading up to this event, nor the status of her career or anything else. She'd always known which year it was, but never thought about her birth date. She'd always knocked a few years off her age when asked by modeling agencies, to appear more of an attractive prospect.

"How could I have been so stupid," she wept into the cold ground, now leaving an impression on her scarred face. She realised why she'd never been accepted as a model. Because life isn't fair, and bad things happen to good people all the time. After all, who could possibly have been so bad as to be exiled to this hell. There was another reason though, which she had struggled with all her years, most likely even the missing ones. She couldn't get her head around it, often ignoring it completely, choosing to blame the ignorance of others than her own short comings.

She felt herself heading in this direction now, and knew where the road ended. Like Nathan Avenue, the road to the truth ended in nothingness, non-existence. For Sarah, realizing why she was rejected meant pain and more pain, accompanied by fasting and self mutilation. She'd started to recall some of her past, remembering a few years of careful watch by her parents, doctors and horrible plastic tubes. She felt herself gagging at the thought and elected to sit up, feeling that she would more easily keep her cool this way.

She'd always been conscious of her appearance, not just the way she dressed but the way she spoke and acted. It just came with the job and besides, if more people did it then the world would probably be a better place. She distracted herself from the answers by checking her glass eye again and then looking at her bandages. They were bloody again, so she chose to ignore them, repeating to herself that she would get out of this town one way or another eventually.

She wobbled on her feet a little as she got up, setting her sights again on breaking out of this prison. She could worry about these things when she got back to Brahms, from a hospital bed if she had to. It sounded like the plot of a bad action movie, but it sunk in; it was her life.

She grabbed the shotgun, and checked that it was loaded. She fired the gun out to the side of the road, pumping each time until there were no cartridges left. She sat back down and reloaded four shells into it. Trying to squeeze a fifth in, she just threw the shell onto the ground when it became clear that it wouldn't fit. She pumped one last time to ready it for action, feeling too dangerous for herself.

She took her bag and put it on her back, making her way down the road, back to town, into the fog. She didn't care if monsters came for her now, she would just kill them, like animals she would just slaughter them. She kept walking down the road, along the center line, occasionally weaving across it absently. She soon found herself on the road leveling out and she started to slow down, feeling more control in her speed. She tried hard to remember her plan, but tried harder not to remember too much, recalling that she wanted to go see what was at the bottom of Neely Street. She'd heard the fog whisper to her of a bar on that street, a quiet little place she recalled, where her brother would buy her some chips sometimes. She shook that thought from her head, focusing on where she was instead.

She looked around, taking in the landmarks. A big blank canvas of fog was the only landmark which she could make out. It was like being inside a television when it was showing static. "Ants in the snowstorm" she used to call it, now seeing more than just a resemblance. She looked harder, and then realised that she was between two large walls, one like a prison wall and the other just a big brick monstrosity. There were marks that looked like letters, they might have once said something useful, but now the bricks just looked blank, probably extending forever into the distance to keep her from going home. The building on her right was hidden by a large concrete fence, which reminded her of a prison, complete with barbed wire on the top. She figured that whatever was on the other side of it wouldn't be worth the climb and the grief.

She felt something soft and wet run down along the bottom of her hand to the tip of her pinky finger. She quickly grappled the shotgun and spun around, determined not to be touched again. Nothing was behind her, just a swirling fog, spinning around her into the sky. She raised her hand, taking it off the gun and saw a red trail running from her forearm to her finger tip. She figured the blood was just running out, the bandages drenched in blood now, barely a white spot left on them. She put the gun down and went back to surveying the scene. There was a brick wall to her right, a prison to her left and inescapable fog surrounding her. She continued her stroll down the road, trying to keep her arm raised somewhat. She felt her skin crawl as a droplet ran down the inside of her arm to her armpit. She was sure she'd have to find somewhere to rest soon, or she'd bleed out and die. She kept walking until she felt the darkness take over the fog, an omen to Sarah of what she would see in front of her, at least one more time.

She was correct, there was another wall created from black plastic sheets and assorted wire in front of her, running between the concrete building and the brick fence. She'd walked past a T intersection which led back down to Lindsey Street, but she'd ignored it, knowing only too well what she'd find there. She'd walked further, past some other buildings she'd never seen before, most of which were also faceless. She hadn't quite made it to Neely Street when the wall appeared, making her fear again for the trials which would inevitably await her.

She pulled herself together enough to have a closer look at the fence. It had a large white patch in the middle. The white patch started from the left as a solid rectangle but split into four or five smaller rectangles at the right end which shot off at different angles. She couldn't put much together, so instead just looked at the red arrow in the center. It pointed to her left. She had no doubt that the red was blood. She'd seen enough, too much, in this town. Everything seemed to have a sinister motive to it, some sort of deep underlying plan which she probably couldn't comprehend until her trip was over. She obediently looked in the direction of the arrow.

Expecting to see a door, she was taken aback by what she saw, waiting for her. The bandaged woman was in front of a doorway, a sliding glass door which had been covered up by large sheets of particle board. She had a pool of blood extending from her feet, even going down the step or two on which she stood. The sight was softened by the fog, which made her want to go forward and see the gruesome sight in all it's disgusting glory. She found herself stepping forward, her arm getting heavier with each step, with each beat of her straining little heart. The fog seemed to get out of her way, sensing her outrage.

"Did you do this?" She raised her voice at the woman, as she raised her weak arm, which was now collecting droplets on the lower extremities. "Are you responsible for this?" She barked louder this time, feeling her throat burn like a cardboard speaker cone.

"You must take responsibility for your own sins. You shouldn't be wandering around unprotected in this town. God will only protect you so much you know." She emitted calmly, like a thought implanted in Sarah's head more than anything. She was sure she hadn't seen her lips move, behind her off-white hair.

"That's why I have this," Sarah retorted, raising the shotgun ready to fire. She wasn't going to let this woman go free, not if there was any chance that she could be doing this to her. It was self preservation, one of the most basic instincts. She was only going to do what her DNA had programmed her to. The mummified monster turned and walked into the now open doorway, disappearing into the darkness beyond it.


	14. Tinned Food and Magazines

Without further prompting Sarah headed into the door behind her. She couldn't have known simply by looking at the outside of the building, but this was a shopping center. There were a few checkouts in front of her, some had unusual growths on them, like a burnt tree, twisting it's way through the ceiling. She stood in the light squeezing through the doorway, and looked into the comparatively dark shopping center. She let a smile flicker cross her lips, more likely just in her head than physically, her lips were so dry she doubted they would be able to move at all soon. There were lights in the shopping center. Fluorescent lights, dangling from the ceiling, some not working, some flickering, but lights all the same. She wasn't too sure about the life of the batteries in her little torch, so she felt lucky to have walked into this.

She shuffled up to the walkway at the nearest register, not seeing any trace of the woman who had a talent for disappearing. There was a shredded conveyor belt on the counter, it moved a little, apparently still operational. Sarah reached over and grabbed a piece of plastic which had fallen off the cracked register and put it in front of the sensor. She wasn't sure if it had worked, but she turned away from it. The sound of gears stripping soon followed, as the piece of plastic got wedged into the small opening and jammed the belt. The sound was loud, just clicking a few times before it stopped, but enough to snap Sarah out of any sense of security.

She saw an old magazine rack next to the counter, mostly covered in horrible rotting paper, turned black with the sands of time. There was one magazine which hadn't faded a day though, it looked a little grubby. She was hardly clean herself so she picked it up, curious as to the nature of it. She flicked a few pages and saw herself. There was a full page shot of her in some horrible nineties trend. A horizontally striped shirt which only her bony frame could have made look thin. The colors had faded a little, and the top looked black and white striped, sort of like a prisoner. She could barely see her scar in the picture, it had been covered up with so much makeup. It was a typical photo that could have been in any fashion magazine, she felt her heart beat a little faster, and her stomach lift a little. She'd gained a little weight since this photo was taken, which didn't surprise her as she probably had it taken ten years ago.

She flipped the page. The next page probably had pictures of her on it to, as the picture previous said it was part of a segment, but the page was just white, like pages out of a scrap book. It was covered in writing.

"That girl's scars make me sick, there are plenty of other talented girls which aren't anorexic" and "Sarah from the last issue looks horrible, at least cover up the scars." Were just some of the comments written all across the pages. There were many which were worse, much worse. She dropped the magazine onto the dirt covered cement floor. Sarah tried to think nothing more of it, instead finding herself even more enraged by these peoples comments. How dare they write her off simply because of her scars. There were plenty of girls who would kill for a figure like hers, how could they take that away from her. She now felt her pain center going off, with all the strength it could muster. Her head started to hurt, her legs and shins started to ache, her arm started bleeding more heavily.

She found herself back in the shopping center, flickering lights and dirty concrete flooring included. She turned around looking for any trace that the woman had been in the room. Her heart pounded in her ears, like she was listening through a stethoscope. She felt small vibrations echo into her ear, forming into sounds. The aisles in front of her were partially lit. She now noticed that out of the four corridors, she could only get into three, and none of them opened up to the back of the store. The opening to the far left would be her first goal, choosing to go from left to right and look into shelves.

The lights were dimmer over here, the only tube near the aisle was flickering inconsistently. As she got closer she felt that the darkness got thicker, like a tar pit swallowing her up. She was even somewhat relieved to see that the aisle was blocked off by a large pile of junk which had been dumped in the entrance to the walkway. Among the items were clothes, pots and pans, assorted cutlery, boxes of diapers. On the top of the pile was a thick flannel shirt. It was clean enough so she picked it up to examine further, taking small breaks every so often to listen for any noises which she would need to alert to. The shirt had a green and black pattern, size extra small.

She sat down in the corner, next to a cabinet which housed a half fire extinguisher, the top half whole while the bottom half appeared to have been torn off. She looked at her arm and wrapped the shirt around it as tightly as she could. It didn't matter how hard she pulled on the ends, she never felt anything in her fingers to deter her from pulling harder. She tied the sleeves into a knot, the shirt wrapping around her arm a number of times before running out. She used the case on the wall with the extinguisher in it to pull herself up.

She looked across the shopping center, seeing the yellow from the light tubes and the blue-ish white from the fog outside touching in front of her. She dragged her feet a little as she moved to the next aisle, this time the lights above were burning bright. On the shelves around her were various tins of food. She knew from experience that there were few things edible in Silent Hill, even in tins. This didn't stop her grabbing a few tins of baked beans and a tin of fruit, and stuffing them greedily into her backpack. The light further down the aisle, near the end had started flickering. As she looked at the shelved she noticed a moving mass of shadow under the light. She walked up to it slowly, regularly checking the shelves and walkway behind her.

The shape on the floor was that of a monster. It was one of the more insane looking ones, the type that she'd seen feasting on the body in the fire department garage. It lay on it's back, eyes wide open and bloodshot, almost human. The cloth which was usually attached was twisted, and held together with staples. A pool of what Sarah assumed was acidic blood had formed around the far side of the monster. Her eye moved down to the left and saw the monsters expression. It's claw like mouth moved slowly, as if trying to chirp last words. She quickly turned behind her to check for an ambush or some sort of trap, finding everything as it should be. She turned back to the monster, which made her jump as it spit up a small amount of blood. She looked into it's eyes and saw that it thought it was going to die. She could nearly have felt sorry for it if it hadn't been so grotesque.

She moved the shotgun up, gripping it properly and ready to fire. She aimed the gun at it's stomach and shot. She terrifying sound of the gunshot made them both jump a little. It echoed around the supermarket, reflecting off everything. The monster let out a squeal, high pitched enough to reach her ears but not loud enough to make her think twice. She saw it's stomach start to move a little faster, the sound of it breathing through the blood in it's throat now a slow bubbling. She wanted to hit it in the head with the butt of the gun too, but she could barely move her arm around enough to aim. She left her conscience in the trunk of the car, feeling instead only hatred for these creatures. She heard the breathing escalate and then slow down, repeating over and over again. She turned and walked away, ignoring the snarling sounds that bubbled up through the mouth of the monster.

She moved up to the end of the aisle, not seeing anything like a can opener. She decided that she was going to kill all of the monsters in here so that after she killed the handless woman she could come back and hide out in here, opening all of the tins to search for food. She was amazed at the amount of useless things in this store, there would have been at least a half an aisle just for spices, and the supermarket wasn't a large one where space wasn't a problem. She walked to the end of the walkway, turning to her left and preparing to try the last option.

In here was a flickering light above her and a bright, shiny light at the end. It finished prematurely, cut off by a piece of black plastic. She'd become sick of this plastic, determined that she would get through even if she had to cut it down with the knife. She looked over the shelves but all she could see were old, decomposing boxes of pasta. She remembered the taste of pasta, so soft and smooth. She could feel it on her tongue. She was about to chew when she opened her eyes.

She'd walked a few steps while she'd been fantasizing, finding herself in front of aerosol cans. They were all different, some deodorant, some bug spray, some furniture polish. She picked up a deodorant can which looked brand new. She gave it a spray and was surprised to see that not only was it working, but also full. She put it in her bag which was getting heavier as she walked the supermarket.

She also saw a chance up ahead. Next to a section with mops and brooms on a stand was an opening in the wall. It looked as if someone had taken a chainsaw and cut down a section of the shelving, creating a walkway across into the aisle which was blocked off. She walked through without hesitation, seeing that the next corridor was without shelving, just a blank area. She even felt more excited when she saw that the aisle opened up into the back of the store. She walked down in the dull yellow light, unaware for a few steps that the floor had become a lot dirtier.

She walked to the end and looked around. In front of her was the large plastic flaps which led to the back rooms, and the fridges were on her right, something foul smelling on her left in the darkness. She felt uncomfortable about the darkness and decided to go there first. She pulled the torch out from under her new flannel bandage and shone it around. A mouth and stumps greeted her as she was faced with the smiling features of a creature secreting black ooze from its gaping, toothy grin.

It walked toward her a lot faster than she had anticipated,twitching slightly and nearly towering over her. It had claws on its fingers and a large black cloth tied around its torso. The ground quaked as it stepped closer. Sarah wasn't as afraid as she should have been, faced with such a hulking, giant of an abomination. She pumped the shotgun and pulled the trigger, using all of her strength to pull it high enough. The shot hit as one single projectile and split it's head wide open. Like an egg, the contents of it's head spilled out onto the floor, even sizzling a little as blood popped and fizzed. It hit the ground in front of her, cracking the tiles and slamming the air out from under it's stomach.

It let out a snarl and started twitching, moving it's legs a little. She thought that it would stop eventually and nerves were making it seem like it struggled. But it didn't stop, it squirmed continuously, too damaged and broken to get up, too stubborn to die. She thought about her options. If she shot it, she might kill it, but she might not, and she didn't want to waste ammunition if she was going to be trapped in this town. She contemplated leaving it, but thought that it might be dangerous, able to lash out even.

She looked down at the mush which had flopped out of it's head. It appeared to be half a brain on the floor, maybe a whole brain if this thing is like a dinosaur or something. Blood was oozing out of the gap, some shooting out like a water pistol, narrowly avoiding her feet. Without thinking, she picked her foot up and stood on the brain tissue. It squashed like a rotten fruit under the sole of her foot, making her feel a little satisfaction, and a little uneasy in the stomach. She knew that there was nothing to throw up, so she pushed her foot to the floor and twisted her foot from side to side a little. The creature stopped moving and let out a the air from it's lungs. She picked her foot up and examined the mess. There were parts of brain everywhere, like someone had thrown play dough from some height onto pavement. The insides were oozing black filth, like a chunky oyster sauce. She felt herself about to throw up so she turned away.

She looked into the cold section and saw nothing of interest. All the lights in the fridges were on, but all them were empty. She looked at the flaps to the back of the shop. She guessed that her prey must have escaped through the back of the shop, knowing how she could beat Sarah in the shopping center. She must be able to command the creatures and set up this one to kill her. She lifted the flaps with her left hand and ducked down to fit through.

The room beyond was poorly lit, she could see cracks of light coming through the flaps, but nothing in the room else except for a small red light which couldn't really illuminate anything. She picked up the light with her right hand again, waving it around to take in as much as she could in a short amount of time. The room was quite empty, like a big workshop. There were a few wooden palettes stacked up in one corner and a large empty shelf on the wall opposite. There was a large roller door on the wall in front of her, with a small door next to it, under the red light. She didn't need anything else and just walked up to the door.

She tried the handle but it was stuck again. A button was between the roller door and the small door was a button which would no doubt operate the rolling mechanism. She thought about touching it, but instead thought of another solution. She took the shotgun and held the butt up to her right shoulder. She pumped once and squeezed the trigger. She blew a hole in the door right where the handle used to be.

She put out her left hand and pushed the door open, finding herself in an alleyway. To her left was a large fence. It was constructed entirely with metal and wires, making it look very unsafe and intimidating. The roller door couldn't be seen, as it was separated off with a large flattened car, laying on it's side. The car was fairly wide, taking up the whole width of the alley when sitting on the tail end. She doubted the stability and looked across the alleyway. In the brick building in front of her was a door which lay slightly ajar. She took the few minute to reload the rifle, putting in another three shells. She pushed on the door and went into the darkness, sure she would find her goal in the rooms behind it.


	15. Hysteria

The walls looked like torn skin, sewn together and stretched around the outside of the room, like some demented tent. The same thick black slime that the monsters pumped through their veins leaked from every gap in the walls, of which there were plenty. Sarah had seen a lot of strange things in the twisted little resort town of Silent Hill, but nothing could compare to what she was seeing. Everything was a little blurry too, it was hard to make out some things on the other side of the room. She didn't dare look at the floor for fear that there wasn't one; she just scouted for an exit.

The blood flowing from her arm seemed to come out quicker in the room, giving everything she did an air of urgency. The makeshift flannel bandage began to get heavier, either from the blood flowing into it or the weakness of her arm. She walked to an oddly colored rectangle on the wall to her right. She could barely make out the knob but pushed it open without it's use anyway. She pulled herself out of the room by holding onto the door frame with her right hand. She had to give it some strength because her arm was so weak, but she didn't know why it was so hard to get out of the room.

She must have been in the back room of another shop because she found herself in a room full of clocks. From floor to ceiling were clocks on shelves, some were big, some were small but they all ticked in unison, there were even displays on the floor with more clocks on them. The whole opposite side of the room was a glass window, a porthole into a sea of foggy madness.

In the center of the room was the woman. She stood staring at Sarah as she panted and caught her breath. Crimson flowed from her feet, and down the walls behind the shelves and shelves of clocks. It never seemed to pool, just flowing in circles, maybe back up the inside of the wall. She looked unsurprised to see Sarah standing at the doorway.

"Tell me how to get out of here and I won't kill you," growled Sarah, raising the shotgun as far as she could. She wasn't kidding, she was willing to shoot this woman, to break her in half with the shotgun.

"You can't leave. Not when your spirit is so far from your body. You don't want to go back." The walls murmured with the sound of her voice, flickering a little in the corner of Sarah's vision. Nothing ever seemed to unsettle the woman, she spoke as calmly as someone soaking in a bathtub. Sarah pumped the canon pressed against her weak, bony shoulder. She felt different about shooting the woman, she wasn't like a creature, she hadn't really tried to kill her. Before she'd even realised she pulled the trigger.

The projectile shot straight through the bandages, through the corpse-like body and out the other side. Blood coated the window behind her, crackling when the remainder of the shot punched into it. The once yellow bandages now were coated in red, seeping down and spilling out as her small, quivering heart pumped the blood. The blood reacted differently though, simply washing through the bandages to the pool of sticky red on the floor. There was no wound on her body, it went with the blood, leaving the bandages as they were, not even a ruffle in them. Sarah's fear drilled back in, whirring like a dentist drill in her ear, feeling her breath and heartbeat pick up.

"I wanted to leave too, God wouldn't let me. I wanted to see the paradise she has prepared for us. It will come one day, I will be complete again. You will see it too, perhaps before me." The woman actually spoke the words this time. Her voice sounded different, impatient and tired, conveying how Sarah felt. Her head was lowered now, looking at the ground. She looked up to Sarah through her thick white hair, the pulsating, black spiderweb which laced her face was now throbbing, like the blood of a thousand were flowing through her arteries.

"I am Jennifer Carroll, and your blood will be mine." She said, focusing her eyes on Sarah. She raised her stumpy arms and started walking toward Sarah. She hesitated at the sight of Jennifer now coming for her. The stumps were bleeding, hovering not far from her face, stitches connecting the skin to the skin, and the skin to the bandages. It dripped a little, Sarah could smell the blood, thick as custard, oozing out of the poorly repaired wrist. It made contact with Sarah's arms, just below the short sleeves of her faded yellow tee-shirt. It burnt like boiling water, she imagined this is what lightning felt like.

It shot through her arms, into her chest and down to her fingers. She dropped the shotgun as her heart restarted and she stepped back. There was a counter to her left and she got down behind it instinctively. Jennifer didn't follow her, instead staying in the same spot and lowering her arms. Sarah sat with her back to the wall, watching the droplets of goo released glide back across the carpeted floor, back to their creator.

She felt the cans and things through the backpack. It was uncomfortable, not just to sit with the things digging into her thin skinned back, but to feel so harmless without the shotgun. It sat staring at her from across the room, the pool of blood creeping toward it. She grabbed her bag and ripped the zip open, throwing her hands in with new found vigor. She rummaged through looking for something, anything which she could use to get out. Tins of fruit, maybe she could throw them and run up and grab the gun. Aerosol can, maybe she could spray it in her face? She felt hopeless, getting now to the shotgun shells. She saw something wink at her from inside the bag, she went in and felt her new weapon.

The golden handled knife was now in her hand. She felt a little helpless, knowing the awesome firing power of a shotgun and the subtle stopping power of a knife. She knew she might be killed in unimaginable agony, dying by unfathomable means. She knew it was time to face the music and give this bitch a very wide smile before she flickered out.

She dropped the bag on the floor behind her and stood up. The knife was in her left hand, her right hand getting heavier all the while, this time not from her own blood. She saw Jennifer looking at her, facing her. She saw something in Sarah which only gave her confidence, Jennifer's hair flickered a little and the spiderweb flexed a little, twitched a little. She looked as if she would fall over, into her obscene pool of blood, as thought if she didn't control it, it would swallow her up.

Sarah walked up, picking her spot, thinking about her options carefully. Right in the eye. She would soon find out if they really were full of puss and goo. She was now almost in reach, she pulled her arm back, feeling the fear shoot through Jennifer's eyes into her own. Not for much longer. She straightened her arm out and thrust it into her. She missed the eye and hit her in the right side of her chest. Quite a miss but she knew she would still hurt a fair bit, maybe slow her down enough for her to get the gun back. Blood spit out of the slit Jennifer used for a mouth. it tumbled all down her front and into the pool. Sarah pulled the knife out and watched, waiting for the blood to drip out, but it didn't.

She stabbed her again, this time on the other side. Blood spewed out of the hole flopped into the puddle at her feet. She went with her urge to twist the knife and turned it clockwise slowly in the wound. Tears were now welling up in Jennifer's eyes, tears of pain, tears of blood. Her mouth drooped and blood erupted from it, covering Sarah's arm. It didn't sting, but she pulled out the knife anyway. The barely-human knife block in front of her quivered, as Sarah herself would no doubt do had she been stabbed. She tried to lift her stumpy arms but they just lay limp by her side, unmoving. Blood kept pouring out as she bobbed her head around, watching the world spin out of her control. She wobbled on the spot like a drunk looking for something to hang onto, as Sarah gritted her teeth and stabbed her in the base of her neck. A red tide shot out, like squeezing a tub of yogurt until the seal popped off. It came out thicker and thicker until it was like a paste. The black scar across her cheek and running into her mouth now became rigid, it looked as if it were about to crack and drop off, Jennifer's lips twitched erratically, like the crazy monster back in the aisle of the supermarket.

Fury swept over Sarah and she blindly started stabbing at her torso, each time twisting before pulling the knife out. She got lost in the frenzy and slipped blissfully into psychosis, stabbing with new found energy, each slip of the knife turning Jennifer into a bloody mass of meat. The hair swept off Jennifer's face as her head rolled back, revealing more black cracks which could have been spreading across her face they shook so violently. Blood now ran down her chin and her front, like a large crimson ribbon tied around her neck.

Her eyes rolled around in her head, no doubt about to unscrew themselves and eject to safety. The veins in her neck now twitched like a scared animal, about to burst from her neck and spray the world in her thick black blood. Sarah continued, bringing her face closer to her chest as she did it, Jennifer looking as if she'd swallowed a grenade and the shrapnel had shot through her chest. She might have been about to bite the wounds, tasting her victory, drinking the only thing she's had to drink in days.

She didn't though, as Jennifer had collapsed backwards before she made contact. She lay on the floor, limbs flailing in a fit she couldn't live through. Sarah got down, not out of pity, but out of insanity, and stabbed her in the neck. Blood sprayed out like a can of silly-string, decorating the clocks, which had started ticking differently, not that it mattered. Her head now clinging on with just one strand of string, she finally let go and gurgled her bloody way out of the world of Silent Hill, grinding her way into the floor boards, into her puddle of blood, seeping through the cracks and leaving nothing behind.

Sarah dropped the knife, awakening to what she had done. It was like a change of shot in a movie, she felt that time had passed but started again where it had left off. There was nothing now where there was something, an abyss where there was some sort of twisted existence. She felt better, divinely correct for vanquishing such an abomination of nature. She was tasting a sweet sensation more welcome than the finest wine or the largest bottle of fresh water. She had killed the one responsible for bringing her to Silent Hill, never mind that she didn't have hands and could never have driven the car, she was the one responsible for imprisoning her, it seemed to make sense to her now.

She found that the clocks had stopped. She'd probably blacked out again when she finished stabbing, not to her surprise. She walked over and grabbed her bag before walking over to look down at her baby, her shotgun. She was going to get it mounted when she got home, as a monument to her will to survive. She picked it up, not surprised that she hardly found the strength to lift her right arm.

She resisted the urge to take off the now red stained flannel and assess the damage. It would no doubt be bad, but she'd feel better not seeing it, the gaping wounds reminding her of something she'd buried and forgotten. It made her think of the bus and the scorched flesh of her brother burnt to her arm, causing a scar to run down her and to plant a memory she was ashamed to forget.

She'd worked hard to get to where she was in her life, and now the past thirteen years threatened to end all of the progress. She had to get out of the town and tell people about her story. Surely they would think she was crazy, but it would make one hell of a pitch for a movie. She could even play herself. She'd always thought she could be an actress if she was too fat to be a model. She was surprised at the craziness which was running through her head. She was aware that she talked nonsense sometimes, but thinking it was something else, at least for her to believe that what she was thinking was rubbish.

She focused on what she was doing instead of what she would do once she was out. After all, it was a good idea to give the story a happy ending. She needed a plan to get out of here. She wanted to stick to the plan of going to the end of Neely street and seeing what was out there. Maybe there would be a finish line and a welcome parade. Maybe the police would be there, going to arrest her for the murder of monsters. She hoped for either, while expecting to find, literally nothing, not even a road. What would she do if she didn't get out that way, what if she found what she expected to find? She didn't want to think about that right now, knowing that she could possibly have only a few hours to live if her wound kept bleeding.

She walked up to the front window and looked out. Fog was out there, harmless fog, hiding monsters, ways out and empty buildings. She didn't like the idea of going out anymore than the idea of staying in the final resting place of St. Jennifer. The name seemed familiar somehow, but she didn't care anymore. The life of a dead woman isn't worth the paper it's written on, or afterlife or haunting or whatever she had been. It didn't mean anything to Sarah, that's why she had to get out. She felt the strain on her shoulder from the bag and the coldness of a handle in her left hand and walked out the door, or the doorway. She was back in the cold gray nothing that was Silent Hill.


	16. Everyobdy Dies

Sarah was on a street with tall buildings, not a street she'd been in yet. She knew there were buildings on Neely street, so she looked around for a street sign. She was about to start walking in a direction she thought would be south, but then looked at the window of the clock store.

"Click Clock Watch Repairs

5 Neely Street

If it ticks, we can fix it!"

So she was on Neely street, it wasn't as she remembered it from her childhood. The bus always came through here and she'd always looked at the buildings, all of the shops and stalls were there, though aged beyond recognition, but mixed up. She wasn't surprised, her memory had been failing her a little lately and buildings can't move or change without people here to facilitate it. Her eye wandered nervously a little, roving the still air between the towering walls.

If she found a black wall here she'd have to turn around. She couldn't really go into any buildings to bypass it, going up stairs or fighting monsters would just make her heart beat faster, and she couldn't do that. She probably couldn't even see the wall, the fear of being trapped here could be too much. She felt vulnerable, but she knew she had to be confident, prepared for anything and alert. Her arm was throbbing, struggling under the now soaked flannel. She knew that not all of the blood was hers, but it only scared her more, not knowing how much was her own. She'd forgotten about all the other blood all over her, looking like she'd stuck her left arm into a tub of blackish blood up to the elbow. Her face no doubt was covered too, being so close to the pulverized body of evil.

She swung the shotgun by her side, looking for anything which would tell her not to continue down the road. She still saw something unusual in the windows of the abandoned shops. The map didn't give the names of many buildings, usually just the necessities of living in the town. The hospital, the gas station, the park. There was no way for her to really know what was where. Some of the windows had absolutely no features, just an empty window with empty shelves. The signs were often faded beyond recognition, while some were very readable, even looking like they'd been put up recently.

On the corner to her left was a brick building with no signs, it just had a blue door. She looked up, seeing the wall ascend into the fog infinitely, like a castle tower. The door wasn't shut properly, swaying a little. She didn't want to look inside but she didn't want to be surprised by sneaking monsters, especially now, when she was unsure how much longer it would be before she couldn't use her arm at all, making shooting a shotgun a lot harder.

She put her foot out and opened the door with it, pulling it back toward her. Inside it was very dark, but not the pitch black she'd been expecting. She thought about how far this building could go, knowing that it could be the back door to even another shopping center. There was a window to her right covered completely in newspaper, there was red writing on it, something about a hole which didn't seem to carry any weight with her. There was a counter amidst the busted tiles on the floor. It was bare, but it had a piece of paper on it. She didn't see any creatures and the only door into the room was the one she'd come in through.

The counter looked as though it was about to fall over under the weight of the brochure. It had a small map of Silent Hill on it, a few marks burnt into it. She looked a little closer at it and saw that there had once been lines and pen marks drawn on it. How they had faded didn't matter to her; there was a line which was now clearly closing off the end of the street. Had other people been here in her situation? The walls could have been anywhere, perhaps even movable. She wanted to blow a hole in one with the shotgun, just to see what was on the other side, but she remembered the one on Lindsey street and that it had simply been a divider.

Convinced she was done, Sarah turned and headed for the door, now sure that she should stop heading down the road. Just because there was a wall didn't mean that she wouldn't be able to get around it, but she didn't want to risk wasting time as she bled. She thought about another option as she shut the door behind her, jiggling the handle until she head it snap shut.

What about the gas station? Maybe she would be able to stock up there and... she stopped thinking. Where was her shotgun? She hadn't been thinking, she must have put it down inside the room when she picked up the brochure. She turned to the blue door and grabbed the handle. She tried turning it, but it just turned in the door, not opening the door. She tried pushing it and pulling it, kicking it. She pulled on the handle until she pulled it off. Her forehead touched the door and slid down as she fell to her knees. She held the broken handle in her hand, letting it roll out when her fingers hit the ground. She felt tears roll down her face as her eyes screwed up.

How could she have been so stupid; that was her one chance. She felt her heart slow right down, the throbbing in her arm with it. She tried to move her fingers, make sure they were still able to wiggle, make sure she was still alive. She turned the situation over in her head. Maybe she could break the window with one of the tins of food. She turned around and got up, sliding her back up the door to support her weight until she was on her own feet. Her shins were caked in blood and dirt, but the pain had died down with the addition of the new one.

She walked around the corner and saw a big white sheet. She went into her bag and pulled out the knife, prepared to hack through it and seeing whatever was on the other side. She ripped the knife into it, some of the caked blood getting onto the stained sheet. She hit something on the other side, something she couldn't cut through. She pulled the knife out and looked through the hole.

On the other side was a large piece of barbed wire, a few little bits of chicken wire and a large black moving beast on the other side. She stepped away from the hole, now able to see black plastic on the other side of the white. She was safe from the monsters, she didn't think it would have seen her, but she couldn't get through the fence, and if she could, she wouldn't be protected against the creature, especially if it was one of the large ones.

She licked her lips, feeling how smooth they weren't. She realised that she unclenched her teeth to do this, making her mouth feel looser. How long had she been doing this for she questioned, unsure of even herself now. She decided to head for the petrol station, maybe she'd be able to find something there, they often have guns in those places to protect against robbery.

She held the knife firmly and headed back up the road, letting her fingertips take in all the details of the carved handle. It was now impossible to see the colors, it was just all red. It didn't disturb her to be using the knife that she'd used to kill the woman. On the contrary, it made her feel safer, possibly more safe than the shotgun. She didn't want to put it away, she wanted to use it on something, anything.

She walked back up the street, now a little more familiar to her. She didn't want to think about how different it was, because it made her remember childhood, although before the accident it was happy. She let her mind wander, as her eye did the same. It saw the buildings, some faceless, others unique enough to compensate, the street was like a half finished jigsaw. She soon found herself dragging her arm up to the top of the street, which seemed to open up a little as she got closer, once again, to the main road.

The fog spread out a little, flying around more freely for a change. She could see a large white sheet, barely visible in the fog to her right. She guessed that it was the other side of the black wall. This made her think about the wall on Lindsey Street. Why was it black on both sides? Was there a section in the middle? Was the white side the safer side? She didn't have time to answer all of the queries, realizing that the answers probably wouldn't really help her anyway.

She turned to her left and loosened her grip on the knife. She thought maybe she could swap hands, but she wasn't sure about her grip on the other hand, and she really couldn't afford to drop it. The road seemed safer here. She was uneasy in Neely street, she now realised. It would only be a block or two and then she would be in somewhat familiar territory. The thought made her feel better. Maybe she could get back to the car and start it somehow. She realised how stupid it sounded.

She walked down the middle of the road, wondering if she'd stop this when she got home. She made her way to the corner of Munson street, finding herself wondering what happened to all of the monsters which had pushed her into the house, eventually leading to her first injury as she tried to jump the fence. She walked to the opposite side of the road a little as she went past, keeping her distance and thickening the fog between the street and herself. It could have been that her arm now was heavy, like carrying a bag of potatoes, she felt it hard to balance as she strolled.

The next block was a long one according to her memory. Her clothes must have stank by now. She had always had a little trouble smelling things, so she wasn't too sure about her own smell, but the volume of different things soaking her light yellow shirt. It was hardly yellow now though, it was brown and red, she could barely even see the cute little design on it. It was meant to be of a little bird in a cage, and the caption was simply "Look at me!" It reminded her of Tweety, but it was more of a little chicken looking thing.

Her legs stung a little, the dirt in the wound rubbing a little. Her right arm looked more like a soggy club and her left looked like the scar running the length of it had started bleeding again, as it had done when they pulled her brothers burnt skin off it. She really started to feel hopeless in this town, maybe she would see the ghost of Ben while she was here. She hoped not, what would he say? She had forgotten him almost completely, not even able to recall his face or voice.

She walked past a brick wall, making her believe again that it must extend indefinitely in both directions. Would the other side of it be a different color too? The road curved away a little in front of her, signaling to her that she was nearly at Texxon Gas, or at least that's what the map said. She didn't feel like she needed the shogun anymore. It would probably be different when she has to defend herself, but now the knife was enough to calm her down, which was what she needed to do more than anything. Her steps were getting wider as she started to smell the scent of petrol.


	17. Brain Fried

She thought she would have noticed this on the first trip, maybe the nightmare of the experience had heightened her senses as she hadn't needed them so much back then. She liked the idea that she would wake up sometime, and that it was all a dream. But the pain and the detail said otherwise, she'd never had a dream this intense before, and she didn't want to keep having them. Maybe that is what causes insomnia?

She couldn't see much in the deserted gas station. There was a white van in the corner, so close to the wall that she didn't know how the driver would have gotten out. The bowser wasn't working, she knew that they got turned off so people couldn't steal from them. She walked over to the office-type building, and looked at the door, observing that it wasn't open and didn't look like she'd be able to open it.

It had a big padlock on the door, although the door was mostly made up by plates of glass. It didn't seem to fit in, she didn't think that it would have been put there by the owners, possibly a result of the twisted town. It wasn't a normal lock, it had four spinners on it, each with a few letters on it. She was rather taken aback by this, realizing that the door was now locked, but that she might be able to open it. It didn't make sense to open it, but she wanted to know what was on the other side worth hiding.

She looked at the lock, looking for anything that would help her solve it. It had rectangular metal around the outside, showing the front of the rings and where the solution should be displayed. The rectangle showed "HOP3" in some twisted way of showing the word 'hope'. She felt that something good was on the other side. She twisted the rings to see the letters and to work out if the solution could be a word. The first ring contained the H, D, K and the number 1. The second had the characters O, 5, V and U. The third P, B, 0 (with the dash through it), Q and the fourth 3, T, R and M. She understood that there were very limited words which could be made from these characters.

She commenced, twisting away and working out the solution, considering that she knew there were only really sixteen possible solutions. She started with 'hope' set into it and turned the second ring, pulling on the lock each letter that she passed. She wasn't surprised to find that the combination wasn't HOP3, H5P3, HVP3 or HUP3. She set it back to Hop3 and spun the first ring. DOP3, KOP3 and 1OP3 passed, yielding no solutions. She started turning the third ring and then the fourth. HOB3, HO03, HOQ3, HOPT, HOPR, HOPM all passed, with no reward. She tried again, the top ring now set on D and repeated the process. K followed and then 1.

She began to think that there may be a lot more combinations than sixteen. She was now a little more familiar with the letters and tried to think of words that could be made from them. She made a mental list; hope, dope, dupe, lube, lobe, loom, loot, door, hoot and doom. She started putting combinations in, one not working after the other. She wasn't surprised that some of them didn't work, they were a bit strange.

She now only had door, hoot and doom left. She tried door, thinking that it would at least have some relevance. It didn't work. She thought about hoot and doom, thinking that doom would have something to do with hope at least. She put in doom and tried the lock. It still didn't work. Maybe the lock was broken? Maybe there was no combination. Her brain started working and she figured that there were something like two hundred and fifty combinations at least. She flipped the letters to the word hoot. She tried the lock and it came off.

The sound dropped and she felt eyes crawl over her. Had she been absent mindedly talking while solving the problem. She had her face to the door, afraid to move. She knew now that the monsters still existed with Jennifer dead. Sarah couldn't hear anything, not a sound, she looked around on the ground for her knife, forbidding herself to misplace that too. She had tucked it into her belt, to her left this time. She pulled it out and spun on her place.

Nothing was in the fog, at least not that she could see. Could the monsters see the fog? She didn't' bother herself to think about the answer to the question, knowing that humans were probably the only animal to rely so heavily on sight anyway. She pushed the stiff door in. It moved about seven or eight inches and then caught on something. She pushed the door again and heard something behind the door fall off a shelf. She looked at the gap and into the room.

There wasn't much of a gap, but she thought she might be able to squeeze through it. Nothing was inside, so she tried to fit her head through, convinced that if she could do that then she could get the rest of her body through. Her ear caught on the door frame, but she fought through the pain and the feeling of tearing and got her head through. She could see a container on the floor below her head, and took caution stepping over it. Her left leg and then her right went through, her left arm on the inside.

There was a display behind the door and that's why she was unable to push it open any more. She pulled her left arm through the gap and felt something pulling on it. Scared, she pulled harder and felt it come through the door. The flannel had simply caught on the door handle. She pulled it off, the bandages with it. The cuts were horrible and gaping. She could see the blood running off and spilling into the container below it. She didn't understand how it could constantly bleed this way and she could still be alive.

She looked around quickly and found something which would have to do. A large roll of thick tape sat on the display and she took it. It was extremely tacky, sticking to itself well. She pulled some off and stuck it to her arm, winding it around and around tightly. There were even more this time, maybe six or seven, to-the-bone cuts running along her forearm.

She tasted bile again, under her tongue. She wound faster and faster, hearing the tape squelch a little as it tightened. She had her teeth clenched, her mouth clamped shut. Vomit shot up through her throat and into her mouth. She swallowed it, feeling as though she didn't have time to vomit. She finished the roll off around her hand, to hopefully catch as much blood before it ran out as she could. It was a wonder that she could even move her hand or arm at all, the muscle and tendon damage must have been so extensive that she didn't even know if she would be able to keep her arm if she got hospitalized.

Looking something like a robot with the silver tape on her arm, she had managed to keep the bangle from getting under the tape. She put the knife back in her belt and grabbed the torch, flashing it around, trying to find anything. The counter was at the opposite end to the door, behind her. There was another brochure on the counter, with the same map and the same information on it.

This had fresh pen on it, just a circle. It was around a building called Heaven's Night. It was followed by writing which simply read, "Phone from here." Her brain processed this carefully, trying not to plant any false hopes. She re read it and re read it, taking it in. She put it back, figuring that it would be a good idea to check it out, although she needed to clean out this place of all useful things first. She leaned over the counter to look behind it. There was a cash register on the floor with the drawer open, something shiny inside it. She thought it must have been coins, but looked closer, finding a revolver. She'd had experience with these before and climbed over the counter, racing to get it. She opened the cartridge and looked inside. There were six bullets in the enormous gun. It was easily twice the size of her gun at home. She felt like nothing could stop her, even though there were so few bullets, even in a full clip.

She shut the cartridge again and tucked it away next to the knife, ensuring that it wouldn't fall out, like a cyborg cowboy. She looked around for anything that caught her eye. In packets under the cash register was beef jerky. She grabbed the nearest packet and tore it open holding it down with her foot. She looked inside and found the meaty reward. It was worth coming in, she thought, just for the jerky, but now that she has the gun, a potential phone and a new type of bandage which would collect the blood, she was in a lot better position to get out. Admittedly she had no idea about anatomy, and had no idea of health in general, just "this feels good, this feels bad".

She looked around, seeing nothing anymore, nothing which would help her, nothing at all. She looked at her arm and saw blood shooting out of both ends of the tape, all over the floor. Her veins stuck out of her skin and turned a dark red through it. She got stiffer, like she'd just woken up, her muscles getting tighter. Her ticker sped up and sped up, turning into one insane heartbeat. She stopped breathing a while ago, her eyes now closed as the world spun faster and faster around her. She opened them and saw the room spin around her. Her arm's were out like a large fan, her right arm banging the counter and sending her off balance, crashing into the wall, and then falling over onto the ground.


	18. Erratic Nightmares

Sarah's eyes were ripped wide open by the sound of snarling. It growled like a rabid dog was trying to chew it's way out of a cage. It didn't stop to bark, it just raked something metal across something else. She rolled over onto her back. The entire store was filled with a strong orange light, like afternoon sun. It shot across the room through a small rectangular window, which was made up of a thick wire mesh. A figure stood at the window, silhouetted by the blinding sunshine. She wasn't sure if the light was sun or something else, it seemed so surreal. The creature was making the noise, twitching as it did, running it's teeth along the wire.

She could see a little better now that her eye was opened. She looked at her arm, unsure of what she would find. It was still there, she had her own pool of blood though. It didn't follow her like Jennifer Carroll's did, it was a lot smaller, luckily, but it had leaked out through the top of her home made cast. The noise was now creeping higher in tone, soon to be nothing more than nails dragging on a blackboard.

She sat up and moved her left hand to her hip, pulling out the gun and then standing up. It was hard, she was just so sick of being in pain. She moved toward the window pulling the gun up near her face. The face was pushed up right against the wire, through the slit of a mouth flickered it's horrible tongue. It lashed the window, tasting the air which reeked of blood. She pointed the gun at it's face and pulled the trigger. The creature didn't make a noise, instead stopping one, the loudest "shut up" Sarah had ever heard. It ducked out of view, banging the wall with it's head.

For a second she thought she was back in the fire station. She noticed that the room looked like it had been ransacked, with absolutely everything taken out. The door was now just a large steel panel. It didn't have a handle, just a blank sheet of cold blue. She walked up to it now alert from the sound of the gunshot. She noticed now that she had lost her bag. No more shotgun shells, map or tinned food. She wasn't that hungry anyway, although she felt like she was about to turn into dust from dehydration.

She pushed on the door and it swung open, emitting a piercing screech. It stopped once it hit the wall. She stepped out, confused by the darkness. She looked to her right to try and see if the monster was really out here. The monster was there, under a large spot light, which was shining orange light into the room. She tucked the gun away and went to the light. It didn't appear to be plugged into anything, so she grabbed it with her left hand and spun it anti-clockwise.

She saw that she was in a large room with no ceiling. The walls were made up of concrete, at least thirty-foot tall. The air sounded like it was full of bats, flying overhead in hordes. The ground was unusual, she didn't know what it was, it looked like some sort of weird carpet, over a large tiled floor. There was a very big symbol on the rug, in white against the black.

It was made up of two concentric circles as the border with various symbols in it and a triangle with a snake-like thing in the center. It made her feel uncomfortable, knowing that she had stumbled once again into the nightmare world. Hadn't she suffered enough? Why was she here again? She didn't know the mechanism which makes it switch over to the other world. She'd only been there once, maybe twice, she wasn't sure. But she knew that she fell asleep last time and it went away. She felt like she couldn't sleep now, like someone had glued her eyes open, like she could stay awake forever.

There was a tunnel to her left, made out of concrete blocks. She walked up to it, not wanting to touch the carpet, which just seemed evil, like it would kill her if she went anywhere near it. She looked out into the tunnel and saw that there was a road outside, like a normal street at home. She looked out over a railing at a large sparkling lake. Her eyes widened as she looked out, even though only one was real.

The lake was full again, like a sea of glitter. It called out to her, asking her to come down and have a closer look. She realised now that she'd walked up to the railing and was leaning over it dangerously. The sky was full of stars, but she couldn't see the moon. It was a cloudless night, and she felt the cool air on her skin, it was just a cool breeze, fresh on her face, making her feel clean, like she just dried herself off from a shower, like she'd risen out of her body and was soaring above the lake.

She felt something disgusting on her face, ruining the sensation. She'd fallen over the railing, putting both her hands out to stop her. She felt her right arm rip a little as she hit the mud below her. The lake had disappeared and she was now elbow deep in mud. She managed to keep her face out of it, but now she didn't know how she would get out. It wasn't too bad, it wasn't sucking her in like she'd expected and she was able to just pull out her hands. She lowered herself into the mud and let her arms out. The muck was freezing on her stomach and chest.

She tried to keep her face out of it, but still managed to get it on her chin. She felt around behind her for anything to grab onto so she could pull herself out. She couldn't feel anything, unsure how far into the lake she was, but it couldn't be any further than a couple of feet. She had her knees in the mud, so she tried for another approach, putting her left hand back in and resting the right on the top. She pulled herself around to the right, dragging her body through the mud. It was hard to do it with one hand, but she thought that it would be a better idea not to use her right arm. She finally felt the firm soil under her palm, she opened her eyes and saw the side of the lake.

How was this here? She knew that there wasn't anywhere like this on this side of the lake except in the park, somewhere she couldn't be. There were stairs to the right, leading up to a chained opening in the railing. She got up, carrying her right arm like a dead weight. She let it swing freely, like it was just pinned on. She felt around with her left hand, breathing heavily to recover from the hard work, checking that all of her belongings were present. Gun. Sword. No lighter. No loss, she'd buy a hundred lighters when she got home.

She turned up the stairs, looking into the abyssal sky, now black beyond compare, lacking any features. The lake was invisible, no lights there, just the one splashed by lights along the underside of the railing. She walked up the stairs, struggling from lack of energy, unsure of anything now. She stepped over the chain which was barely ankle height in the middle. At the top she saw what she was waiting for, a large wire flooring, no concrete anywhere except for the large stained blocks across from her.

She was now on what she believed to be Carroll Street, her least favorite street. There was a wall to her left which she could barely manage to look at, covered in bodies, some in sailor suits, some in dresses, all of them without heads or other limbs, just clothed torsos. She thought they were on the other side of the fence which ran up as far as she could see and they ran all the way up it. To her left was a road, just like the one that she took to get into the town, as if it was completely normal, just night time. She thought she could even see some lights moving up there. She thought about calling out but it was unlikely that they would hear her. She focused on where she thought she had to get to; Heaven's Night. There could be a phone in there. It could just be the town playing tricks on her, trying to get her to the place where it wanted her next, the place where she would be gutted and used for some sacrifice or to feed the creatures. Nevertheless, she didn't believe that she'd be able to get out of the street or whatever that easily anyway.

She walked down the street, seeing fire off far in the distance and lighting up the street in an red glow. She thought she could see something sitting on top of what must have been a towering inferno to light up the street. It had large wings and sat with it's legs crossed. It was terrifying, the movements it made, simply twitching what appeared to be a goat-like head.

She'd seen this before. It was on the inside of the band which she had done the cover for, Krush, a silly name for a metal band she thought, named after a schoolyard thing. She didn't know they were satanic or whatever until she saw it. Needless to say she wasn't happy about it, asking them to remove her face from the cover. She was disgusted to find the cover later in a store with the goat head over the top of hers. It looked as though it was looking right at her, peering into her soul, bringing her fears into existence. She was happy to see a fence separating them though, it couldn't get to her and she couldn't get to it. Was this the God that they were talking about, was it simply another creature sent to kill her. She was now walking among the concrete. There were lines drawn on the faceless blocks, to give them the appearance of real buildings. It was poorly done, looking like a child's cartoon brought to life. If only, she thought as she made her way down the road. There was a small alcove further down, and large words written on the wall next to it, "Heaven's Night." Was her journey at an end? She couldn't know, she couldn't even think about it.

She walked up to the alcove, standing like a cowboy in the middle of the opening, and looking into it. There was a door and stairs drawn on the wall and a concrete floor. There was a roller door on the ground which appeared to be her only way out of the gaze of the demon like creature. She clearly wouldn't be able to get in through the drawn on door, so she had a look at the roller door. She walked toward it, trying to find a handle, but it opened as she approached. Inside was a dim light, swinging a little, illuminating a staircase, leading down to a hallway, made up of white sheet walls.


	19. Signals of the Deranged

She walked down the stairs, the roller door slowly closing behind her. There was nothing out there anymore, it felt like the door was keeping the demon out more than her in. The walls were actually pretty bright, the lights hanging above some wire forming the ceiling. The ground was concrete and it pounded her feet as hard as she pounded it, running toward the end. She didn't know why she was running, she just was. Her left leg hurt a little about where she stabbed it, her arm was swinging limply and throbbing inside the tape, making her wonder why she would have chosen to run at all.

The end of the hallway was coming up, a large black door with dark, rusted bars over a blacked window. It looked like it could open up and eat her but it simply stared blankly back at her. Her heart came pounding back into her chest, catching up with her and pleading for her to stop. Her left arm hung like it wasn't attached anymore, she didn't want to look at her shoulder, sure that it would make her sick. She reached for the door, turning the rectangular metal handle and stepping through.

The room beyond was just a black void, something in the corner was rattling. She stood in the doorway as the door swung open to the left. The light from the hallway crossed the room to the opposite wall, lighting up three mattresses on makeshift beds. The mattresses had cages over the top with thick metal bars on them. Creatures were inside them bashing against the metal with their malformed heads. Black muck shot out through the bars occasionally, not at Sarah but just in any direction. The noises varied in volume, sometimes loud clanging or quiet chirping, but the result was the same. There were IV stands next to the beds, easily visible against the tiled wall. They appeared to be full of mud or something dark and they ran into the cages which were chained to the ceiling or what was there in place of one.

She remained in the doorway, looking for a way out before entering, not wanting to stir up the creatures in case they were going to spit at her. There was a door to the right, on the wall. It looked like another roller door. She hoped that it would open for her again, wishing for anything that could help her out of this insane room sooner. She stepped forward with her left foot, onto the tiled floor. They looked slippery but they weren't, they crunched a little under her feet like stepping on eggshells. The room lit up as she stepped in, lighting up the room in white, giving it a little more of a sterile look, while staying grimy with what could have been sewerage for the smell. It was dripping out of air vents on the walls and down the walls, all over the aluminum light fittings which swayed a little, like the room was breathing.

She edged over to the door, her footsteps inaudible under the sounds of crazy creatures slamming around in the cages. She didn't want to look away, the same as she didn't' want to put her back on the wall either, so she picked her path and sidestepped to the doorway, turning only when it started to open and the lights in the room behind her started dimming, eventually down to nothing as the door opened completely in front of her.

She was in darkness, so she took a few a steps in before grabbing the light on her right wrist. By the time she got it and pushed the button in, the light on the ceiling flickered on, continuing to flash even after it had turned on. Her mouth was open but no air was coming in, she couldn't breath. Her heart started beating harder and harder as she caught her balance, not an easy thing to do with one eye and one arm. She was in a garage, barely lit up in the harsh down light which she stood under. She was standing in front of a well, her toes already over the edge. In the pit was a body, completely torn to pieces, shreds of skin and a pool of blood all that she could see. Parts of the clothes, fingers and bones of a motor mechanic were inside, and she was about to fall in. She felt something push her, something cold, something that wasn't her.

She opened her eyes to see the inside of the pit, now below the ribs and hunks of flesh. She pushed herself up with one arm, surprisingly easily. Blood was completely down her front, her legs, face and shirt were soaked. She felt herself gag at the warmness of it all, like it had been heated, or worse, fresh. She sat up in the mess, looking up at the edge of the hole. She grabbed onto it and felt the cold concrete under her fingers. She looked down to see if she'd dropped anything in her fall.

On the ground was the knife, shining a little, as if it was happy to be amongst the bloodshed. But it was what was behind it that she was drawn to. A torn shred of leather, probably a belt sat in the middle of the pile, and on the belt was a mobile phone case. She quickly reached down with her left hand once she'd gotten to her feet and grabbed the knife, quickly putting it away, and then grabbing the belt and just slinging it over the side, not too carefully.

She stood up straight and the lights flickered just a little too long. Out of nowhere came a slap. Something she wasn't ready to hear. Then another, she couldn't even see where it was coming from. The tool boxes echoed the sound in a metallic way, bringing it back to her head for her to hear. She looked around for the source, feeling a burning on her right shoulder. She knew now that she did have feeling there, seeing something run down over the tape, making it bubble just a little.

She whipped out the gun with her left hand and cocked the hammer. She saw a head come out from under the light, moving as if under a strobe light, even when it wasn't flickering. It looked up at her and spat out just a little black liquid. She heard another slap so she pointed the gun and pulled the trigger. She didn't get it in the head, she shot it in the leg, the enormous gun separating it from the body in an explosion of tar like blood. It screeched, writhing in agony and having some sort of a fit. It squirmed in pain, the leg twitched just a little as she once again grabbed the side of the well. It must have been able to open the roller door, because it was laying right in front of it. It gave up the final breath and submitted to death.

Sarah kicked off the ground a little, careful not to slip on the blood, and sat on the edge. She swung her legs around onto the concrete and grabbed the phone. She didn't think it'd be a good idea to stay in the room if the monsters could so easily get in, she wanted all the peace she could get to call whoever she could with the phone. She could now make out a door in the corner of the room, to the left and at the opposite end of the room to the roller door and the freshly offed monster. She slung the belt over her bloody, bony shoulder and headed for the door. It looked like any ordinary door that you might find in an office, just a red painted door with a small rectangular window about head height. She reached out for the handle and turned it. It just slipped in her wet hand. She wiped it on the back of her shirt and tried again. The handle was very stiff and didn't have anything on it for her grab onto, but she eventually got it open.

On the other side of the door was another white hallway, with the same concrete floor and missing wire ceiling. She wanted to see if these walls were the same as the ones in town, having something on the other side. If there was, what would it be, she was pretty sure she was underground. She shut the door behind her and put her back to it, feeling a little bit of the cool air from under it on the back of her ankles. She grabbed the belt with the phone on it and pulled it in front of her. She checked that she had everything, gun, knife. Whatever, she pulled the phone out of the case and threw the belt and case on the floor.

It was an older phone, with a green display, only big enough for one of two lines. She didn't even think it would be able to text message. It was about the size of an air conditioner remote, made from green and black plastic. One button had the little red circle with a vertical line in it, so she pressed and held it with her thumb. It lit up and then turned on. It flashed something, maybe it said "low battery" or "insert pin" or even "You're Dead" but it turned off before she could read it. She tried it again, unable to make it even flash. The batteries must have been flat. She didn't know if she should keep it or just throw it away. She bent down and picked up the belt, holding it between her middle finger and the phone on her left hand. It was getting old only being about to use one hand, she wasn't very happy about it, it might as well have been removed, it was only going to make her life harder. She put the phone back in the case and put the belt back on her shoulder, thinking that only bad could come from leaving it behind.

She wanted to take the knife and peel back the sheets, seeing what was behind them. She knew that she probably wouldn't like what she saw. A light flashed over her from the opposite end of the corridor, like a flash light searching for her. She moved her hand up to her face, shielding her eyes. She wanted to run up and see if it was a person, or another twisted creature, preying on humans tendency to want to go toward the light. It was dark in the hallway, even under the light, after seeing the brightness of the spot light.

She walked down the corridor, sensing eyes moving over her body, examining her, judging her. Was this her time to be rescued? Was this the end of her obscene journey? She'd learned the hard way through life that you can't always rely on people, but you end up looking like a bitch if you just totally write people off whenever they try to do something for you. She had learned to be open to new opportunities but to be prepared for disappointment.

When she got to the end of the hallway she had to stop herself from falling over again. The walkway ahead would easily have been three stories above the asphalt. It looked like a diorama, just a normal alleyway, street lamps lit up the cold brick walls, the signs of a thousand lost souls of a different kind, lost to the downtown neighborhood. She knew the street a little too well, recognizing the dumpster, where the doors were.

There was a creature in the light, or maybe it was just a person, she couldn't know for sure. They stood just outside of the light of the street light, not quite making a shadow. A car drove down the street, but it looked a little scary, somehow, the creamy white color of the old car was like the color of an insane man's teeth, like the car was allowed out of a demonic realm only to steal young women off the streets.

She wanted to call out to the car, to the person under the light, but she was sure they wouldn't be able to hear her. She was probably just looking into the real world, the streets and back alley's of Brahms. It wasn't a large city, it was just big enough to have some sort of underworld crime and gangs. It felt like a haven, somewhere where she could get some Chinese food, stay at a friends house or visit her mother. She felt like she was a million years away from this paradise, or at least thirteen.


	20. The Elevator and the Restaurant

She snapped out of the nostalgia which she'd fallen victim to. Sarah knew that she wasn't there, she was in Silent Hill, the crazy town where she'd been dragged by some minion in a car, to serve demonic and unbelievable purposes. She'd killed many creatures, which she had no idea could even exist. She had been injured many times, the worst threatening her life, and now she was fantasizing about going into alleys, breeding grounds for filth, the place where she should go to catch diseases not medical attention which she obviously needed.

She turned around, trying to check which way she'd come before logic prevailed and she realised she needed to take the right path, away from the garage. She stepped back into the white walled hallway, like walking in a plastic bag, she knew what it must be like to be in quarantine with a deadly disease. The corridor extended for at least a few hundred yards, each step as boring and bland as the last, the walk taking a long time.

She could, however see all the way to the end of the corridor, to a red door, a deep blood red with a black, circular mark on it. It had a triangle in the center, it was the same symbol she'd seen on the carpet outside the gas station. It made her feel terror, the same primal fear she'd felt seeing the first monster smack it's slimy feet out of the back room of the Historical Society, the same cold grip on her stomach as she'd felt when she was in the trunk of the car, not sure if she'd be rescued or tortured and turned into a seat cover. She knew it was the only way out, the only chance out of the town, even though she could be put to sleep at any moment and find herself somewhere else. The door seemed to be alive, burning with an invisible flame, even as far away as she was.

She realised she'd stopped walking, and started again, a little slower now, ready to lash out at anything, hand on her pistol which she had only four bullets left in. Should she take a bullet? She didn't know if she'd get out of the town, or what would happen to her next. What if a huge blade chopped her left arm off and she could no longer do the deed? She didn't appreciate her position all too much, but she did think that ending it all would be a step too far, after all, she could get out. She felt unclean for thinking such a thought, like she had a good life up until a few days ago and that when she got back she could act like this had never happened. Hardly, could anyone ever forget this?

She was nearer the door now, feeling the same solid something in her stomach, slowing her down, making her want to find any excuse not to go through the door. She turned back to see what was behind her but she couldn't see anything. All of the lights which she'd walked past were now gone, never to be seen again. She went to grab the light on her wrist but pushing the button didn't do anything; it had finally died after all that they'd been through. It was like a pet had died, she wanted to take five minutes to bury it, another half an hour to say something meaningful, but she knew she just had to go to the door and go through.

She took a few more steps and then a few more, eventually at the door. It had all been an illusion, it wasn't really rippling, it didn't really have the symbol on it, it was just a sign which had a triangle and a circle around it. Something about air she thought it said, it was pretty badly weathered, unusual considering that the place couldn't even exist. She reached out and grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. She just couldn't sum up the next room in words. In the center of the room was an old elevator, made out of a cage or something. A walkway spanned the distance between the elevator and the door, below it an enormous fan, the size of a large car spinning around ferociously. It was loud, deafening. She was used to the mixed dynamics of the other world, suddenly loud, suddenly silent, although mostly silent and tense. It whirred around and around. She hoped that it wouldn't pull her in, as the walkway didn't have any railings.

She stepped out, feeling her hair rise a little. The air shot up into her blocked nose, the blood not really wanting to move. Neither did her hair, which was so full of muck and dirt that she was surprised it moved at all. Another thing that she was going to do when she got home, cut all her hair off, it was probably all she could do. She grabbed onto the door frame and tested the walkway. It was solid as a rock, it wasn't going anywhere. She braced herself to let go, ready to take the step toward the elevator. She knew better than to think that elevator wouldn't work, what would be the point of leading her here if it didn't work. She was halfway along the walkway, keeping low so that she wouldn't move too much. If she was any lower she would have been crawling. She made her way to the elevator quickly, waiting until she was inside to stand up again.

She felt around without looking for the knife, the gun and the belt, all of which were present. She looked around for a panel for her to select the floor she would ride the elevator to. She nearly died when a grate dropped from above the doorway, missing her right shoulder marginally and slamming violently into the flooring. She couldn't find any buttons, but the elevator started riding up anyway, speeding up and speeding up, until gravity started to work against her and push her to the floor. She felt all her blood rush to her feet, and her head fall onto the floor, like someone pulled her skeleton out. She heard screeching and she tried to put her hands on her ears, even managing to use her right hand.

The elevator stopped, the air punched her in the stomach. She let the momentum push her body up into a sitting position. She felt blood run down her face, from her forehead. It ran all the way in front of her right eye, down the side of her nose. It ran to her lip and into her mouth over her leathery, dry lips. She didn't taste it, she knew better than that. She looked around saw a normal elevator door, as if she'd gone up into a normal building. She checked her things and stood up, the elevator doors opening as she did. The restaurant into which it opened was actually well lit. It looked like a Happy Burger or something, all of the tables were pushed up against the sides, like it had been cleared in a hurry. She couldn't see anything of interest there, so she turned her attention to the counter which was across the wall in front of her. She didn't bother looking around, there wouldn't have been anything in the corner which would have made her more comfortable.

It was unusual to see this place after wishing she was at home eating take out food not long ago. The menu was just blank, all white. The counter was completely barren, nothing on it, not even marks where something had been. She looked back at the elevator, with the pool of blood in the bottom. She hadn't noticed it before, not even when her face must have been in it. Maybe it was her blood which had spilled out of her taped up arm. What caught her eye though was the doors on each side of the elevator, opening out into rooms beyond. Monsters were in there, many of them. They were all of the same type, they were all spewing slime, they were all wearing stained clothes. She didn't know yet what these creatures were capable of, but she didn't want to find out.

There was a door to her right, to the back of the store, she walked over to it, just checking that she had everything. They were starting to fill the room now, she grabbed the handle and turned it, pushing on the door. The door wouldn't open, it was jammed with something. The creatures were dopey, they were taking their time to get across the room, now only half way across. The room around them was getting darker, soaked in the Vegemite mixture which they spewed everywhere, out of every pore of their being. It even managed to get on the ceiling and crawled along with them.

How could she even be seeing this, and the door wouldn't open, to let her out. It opened a little bit, giving her a little bit of hope that she could bend of break whatever it was. The monsters where coming closer, they were now up to the counter. They were a lot bigger now that they were in her face. She kept pushing on the door, her feet sliding along the floor. She was using her left shoulder, probably not a great idea as it was her only good arm. She started giving herself some room and ramming it. It gave a few more inches but still not enough for her to get through. They were getting in closer than she ever thought they would have the chance to, now only feet from her. She didn't know how brutal they could be, having killed them before they attempted anything.

She wasn't about to let it happen now either, she reached for the knife with her left hand as she moved out from the door again, ready to ram it one more time. She looked over the white face of the creature, the tar spilling down it's chin, the room behind it, which was once a bright and normal restaurant now a layered and textured painting made entirely with black paste. It's head bobbed a little as it craned in, not nearly as tall as the other had been in the supermarket. She knew she couldn't kill them all, in fact she probably wouldn't kill this one.

She stood like a tribesman with the knife ready to shred it's face and stab it's throat. It's eyes rolled around in it's head when she did, right between the eyes this time, surprisingly easy, it just slid right in. It didn't shriek, it just dropped, Sarah using it's falling action to pull the knife back out. She didn't know if it's death was quick, painless or neither, nor did she care, she just wanted to get back to the door. She had black all over her arm, covering the blood a little.

Another creature was behind the dead one, it was a lot bigger, like the one with the splattered brain. She rammed the door once or twice more just out of urgency, seeing it move just a little, maybe two inches. She was nearly able to get out, it wouldn't take much more. She still had the knife in her hand, careful to keep it's eager blade from slicing her own skin. She rammed it again, but it didn't appear to be able to move. Growling and snarling filled the room, and the monster was now ripe to join the other on the floor. Black was climbing across the ceiling above her, soon it might reach the door. She remembered the room with the crib in it and didn't want to relive that experience.

The creature had opened it's mouth, a cavity full of jagged and chipped teeth. She didn't want to witness the fury of this so she flicked her knife around to the kill position, ready to strike again. It bent down and she pulled the blade across her body from right to left, slashing out at it and connecting somewhere near it's chin. It paused, but no more than a man who cuts himself shaving would, before it opened it's mouth further, enough for her head to fit in. She had a feeling she had seconds to live, and she stabbed out, this time hitting the eye socket. She twisted the knife or the knife twisted her, either way the eye remained when she pulled out, now just a slit gushing blood. It's mouth closed and slammed into the wall next to the door. The gigantic body would have been twice her size, about a million times wider, it would act as a barricade for her to continue her work. More faces could be seen floating like demented moons in the black, featureless void of the restaurant, coming closer and flying toward her.

She turned back to the door and saw the black avoiding it, instead dripping onto the sides of the door frame and running down. She held the knife away from her and she rammed the door, it budging a few more inches. She tried her luck and squeezed through the gap, her ears brushing the sides of the opening. She turned her body sideways and slid her shoulders through like an envelope into a mailbox. The next room was poorly lit, but it seemed like day time compared to the infinite dark of the former happy burger. She could see that the thing which had been stopping her from opening the door was simply a pot plant, placed behind it. She felt like laughing, had she known she wouldn't have rammed it as much, her left shoulder now a little sore, drowned out still by the now consistent pain of her arm.

She could see a desk and a large chair in the center of the room. She couldn't see a door around her though. The office looked like it was night time, slithers of moon light shining through the blinds on the window to her left. She had given up trying to justify or even explain the collection of seemingly random rooms which she had gone through. It was as if something was making it up as she moved through it, just trying to stall her enough for it to come up with something else.

She heard a small chirping in the room, it was happy, like a small bird. She spun around to try and find it, looking back at the door which she had left open. Rushing over to close it, she heard the noise again. She saw the exit to this room, to the left of the door she'd come in through. She spun around and saw the chair doing the same, although at some considerable speed. On the chair was a creature, spinning around so fast that she thought there was no way it could cling to it. It wasn't funny, any other time she might have found something humorous about it's appearance, but it just made her head want to turn too, the sight somewhat demonic to her. The chair stopped, the high back to her. It swung around now so slow it was painful. The monster wasn't there anymore, giving her the urge to get the hell out of the room. At least in Happy Burger she could see the monsters, they'd all be dead by now, either that or her. The snarling from the other room started to fill her mind, making her realized she couldn't go back, not now.

She turned to face the exit and felt claw marks on her right arm, tearing the tape a little, but busting the bare skin above it. The creature was guarding the door where she planned to exit, it's stitched face twisted into a sickening grimace, as if it was a dead mans head, that man having died a very painful death. She grabbed the gun and shot if in the head, blowing pieces of it's skull onto the door and walls behind it. It didn't hit her, for which she was glad, but the steaming head of the monster had no backing, the skin of the face standing freely in it's place, like paper folded to stand up. It flickered a little, making her want to be sick, before collapsing and covering the hole where the top of it's head had once been. It collapsed on the floor, falling to it's left and curling up like a very, very dead spider.

She hadn't even noticed it's features before she'd killed it. It wasn't like the others she'd encountered, which all seemed to be one of three different types. Perhaps this was a new type, but she didn't want to think about it too much. It appeared to have the body of a child and the head of a man, stuffed into a rotting sack with holes for the legs and arms. The head didn't even look like part of it, more like it had been sewed on, just sitting on top like a hat. It was dead now though, the head clearly was attached, housing all it's DNA, instincts and past experiences.

She stepped over it like it was a dog's toy or a stain on the carpet, and reached for the door. Her arm was now in extreme pain, leading her to think that maybe the claws of the beast had some sort of venom or maybe her pain just seemed to build up with no limit. She felt the emptiness in her stomach now, hungry beyond words, like she could eat a whole plate of fish and chips. The door handle had been spared from the blast of gray matter or whatever color demon brains were. She grabbed on and twisted, this time no catch, just opening like any other door would.

She stepped through, seeing something familiar in the fake wood finish on the door. It reminded her of one place where she'd lived and she'd had brick pattern wallpaper. Now she really felt like vomiting, thinking that at the time she'd actually thought it wasn't that bad. On the other side was something which made her think twice. She wished there was a brick pattern on these walls, once again in a corridor, this time the black side of the plastic was showing, behind all the wire scraps from around the world. The hallway would have been at least eighty yards, all of it lit up by one or two swinging light bulbs which rocked from left to right like pendulums. At the end of the hall was a red door, this clearly had the symbol on it. She walked up toward it, knowing that she had three bullets left in the gun, enough to end the life of any monster she would find on the other side of the door. She also had a knife which hadn't failed her yet, and seemed to make her hunger for the death of anything she could stick it into, sending them all to oblivion. She wondered if she'd cut herself in her sleep with the knife, but she remembered that she got the knife after she'd got the first cut.

It was like she was on a conveyor belt, gliding toward the door whether she liked it or not. She looked over her shoulder to see how far she'd walked and saw that she'd already covered quite a bit of the long hallway. She turned around, having closed the gap to the door very quickly, and now finding herself only a couple of feet from it.

The handle was in the middle of the door, a large glass bead about the size of an apple, and about the same color. She reached out and grabbed it, looking at the snake, the triangle and the two circles which it was in the middle of. There were various runes around the outside, probably of some sick religious significance. She pushed the door open and stepped through.


	21. Heaven's Night

She stepped into another out of place scene. She appeared to be at some sort of backstage, to her left were large purple curtains and stairs leading up to what was probably a stage at about the height of her knee. To her right was a large mirror with light bulbs around the outside and enough makeup to sink an ocean liner. The place seemed familiar, but at the same time so distant that she felt ashamed to be there, like it was beneath her. She barely noticed the how pink everything was before she walked up to the stairs and found the opening in the curtain. She put her left hand under it and pulled the curtain to the side, looking through only a little before she stepped up and through.

She knew she didn't like where she was. On the purple wall opposite was a neon sign, "Heaven's Night". It appeared Heaven's Night was a strip club, and she was on the stage, a stage with light bulbs around the sides and a pole in the center of a circle shaped end. Tables were covered in papers and empty glasses, a bar in the far left corner.

In front of the door was a white and red coated man, with a large knife in his right hand. His bald head was half way between that of a normal person and a monster, looking decayed and dried out but also human like. His eyes burned intently, blood now dripping down the sides of his head like he had burrowed with it through razor wire. The rest of the room faded away as she focused on him. She had the upper hand now, she knew her gun was loaded and she knew that he couldn't get a gun out fast enough, not faster than her. He started to speak:

"I know what you are thinking. I cannot be killed. You cannot win, not here. After all, you are in Silent Hill."

The words sounded like the demented voice of a cement mixer. It churned the words before pouring them out,his voice like a gravel truck with a broken axle. Sarah didn't have anything to say to him, she already knew what he would say, something about God and fueling it. She didn't care. She took a few steps forward, calmly at first but then faster, until she was next to the pole. He had stepped forward a little too, but he awaited something from her. She didn't care, she just slipped her left hand behind her and whipped out the gun. It was the size of a football, about a million times more deadly and she knew how to use it.

She pulled the hammer back and took aim, the alien looking man just standing there, knowing what would happen. It didn't seem right, maybe he would be like Jennifer Carroll, and require more than a few holes. She thought of a plan. She aimed at his head and pulled the trigger, then pulled it again and then again and then once more, to ensure all bullets were used. It was like time slowed down, her pulling the trigger before the bullets hit.

None of them hit her mark, but one crunched his chest like a cannonball, another splitting his stomach into something resembling bloody mince. The third bullet did the best though, shooting through his upper arm just above the elbow, slicing it off, busting the muscle and bending it backward, grotesquely ripping the skin as it twisted, blood flying up into the air, making all sorts of shapes before time caught up and it simply flattened and conformed to the ground. The knife fell with the rest of the arm, the fingers slackening. Blood shot from his mouth, solids and liquids spilling out like rotten garbage, like he was regurgitating the contents of a cannibal.

He fell to his knees and rocked back onto his heels, looking at the ground. He started spitting out blood, as if he'd simply been punched in the mouth. He had paled considerably, like he'd had his blood sucked out by a giant mosquitoes. He turned his head, as if he were using all of his strength just to accomplish that, to see his arm on the ground next to him, covered in more red than he'd spat out, which was considerable. A smile grew on her face, the face of someone who'd just realised they'd won the lottery. He fell over in front of his arm, twitching just a little.

"I guess I can kill you, huh?" She said, trying to think of some clever one liner which could have had her arrested at home. She stepped off the stage, onto the wooden floor which was covered in fliers for hookers or strippers. She knew she didn't belong in such a place, killing monsters, taping up arms that would be better off amputated and running through excessive fog to escape a resort town.

"I could really use a smoke right now." She wheezed, unable to come up with anything which was horrible enough to be a one liner. She didn't care she'd killed this man, he was probably just a minion of St. Jennifer; he probably brought her to the town. She put the gun back in her belt and pulled out the knife, which she was going to use to make one hundred percent sure that this man was on hundred percent dead. She was going to dice him if she had to, put him in a position that even if he couldn't die, he'd wish he could. She was standing over the body, she could see that he was still breathing, although very fast and shallow. Kneeling down next to the body and seeing the damage she'd done. She put the knife down to her side and pushed his shoulder so that he was on his back.

His squinting little eyes looked at her through all the blood which had run down his face. She felt now that there was some kind of connection between them, like he knew her better than he let on. She turned around to find the knife. It was laying innocently on the ground next to her, gold and silver and covered in dried crimson, the only paint which she could find, the paint from someone else. She put her left hand on it and gripped it, the coldness of it about to be the changed with the warmth of the body, the coldness about to transfer to her and her brain, making her feel like she hadn't really done what she was about to do. She liked the idea.

She turned around to face the body and felt the cold enter her, but not where she'd expected. With his left hand he had grabbed a knife of his own and plunged it deep into her stomach, probably through the other side of her wafer thin abdomen. Her eyes were so wide she could have seen forever, her mouth open stupidly, blood dripping out her nose and eyes.

She looked down at the knife and his body, and stabbed him in the face, repeatedly, turning his face into a large piece of bloody meat and bone. She grabbed him by the nostrils and put the knife to his throat and started sawing his head off. She spat up blood in a fit as she did, breathing irregularly and feeling her head so unsteadily on her shoulders, rolling around like those things people put on their dashboards. She sawed through his spinal column and out the other side. Using the strength left in her left and right arms, she picked up the head and threw it away.

She turned to the gargantuan blade which shone like Excalibur from her belly button. His hand had loosened around it, and she brushed it away. This was it, he'd killed her, he'd ended her life. He was wrong about one thing though; she had killed him, the same as Jennifer Carroll had thought that Sarah couldn't kill her. She grabbed the handle and pulled it out, taking all the strength in both of her arms. It hurt her arm to use it but she didn't care anymore. The sooner she pulled the sword of a blade out of her stomach, the sooner she'd bleed out and die, ending all of the pain. She flopped it on to the ground in front of her, next to the carcass of the Silent Hill oddity, the one that finally got her back. She grabbed the tape on her right arm and pulled it off, blood spilling out like someone had thrown a bucket of it onto her. She didn't even know she had so much blood in her.

She fell over onto her left side, now shaking a lot as the icy fingers of death caressed her, strangled her and twisted her. Everything looked different now that she knew she was minutes from death. Being stabbed was the most painful experience she'd ever had, more painful than knowing she was never going to be a model, that no one would ever hear her story. She felt her brain turn over, following her stomach as it shut down for the last time. She regretted now, using all of the bullets on him, not saving one for herself, all of the things in her life which she'd done wrong.

She couldn't believe that she was going to die without knowing what had happened to her in the last thirteen years. She didn't want to know now, she had someone else to answer to. Ben would be waiting for her wherever she was going to be. She wondered about her mortality, knowing now that it was too late. What if God wasn't real, what if when you died it was just the end. Her family would never find her body in this place, hell it probably wouldn't even exist soon, changing into something else for some other poor soul to lose their mind and life to.

She felt her knees curl up to her chest, the scar on her arm brushing against the inside of her leg. Nothing could have prepared her for all of the feelings which came with knowing you would die. She wished she could have one last laugh at the world, one last joke. She felt her eyes closing, though her sight had finished a long time ago. She imagined all of the things she would never know, all of the things she'd never tried. She wished she'd learned guitar, learned to type, learned a science. She had never seen so many things, although she now knew that some sights were only meant for some people, that no one else would see what she saw.

She relaxed her whole body, her breathing getting more and more slow and her heart about ready to abandon ship. Blood pumped out of her arm and out of her stomach, making a puddle which connected with the body of the man, making some things clear. She thought about last words which she wanted to say. She simply thought of meaningless words which she just liked the sound of. Did a person have last words if there was no one around to hear them? She didn't know.

"Bubble gum." She gasped, letting out more blood than air. It spattered all over her face, she couldn't feel it, she could have been anywhere but on the floor of a dilapidated strip club, somewhere she had never expected to see. She gave up the fight, embracing death, but also knowing that she herself had thought that the deeds of a dead woman weren't worth the paper they were written on. Feeling guilty, she wondered what she had done in her life which would have now be forgotten.


End file.
